On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 10:47:45AM -0600, Zach Garner wrote:
[...]
> First:
> 1. The sheer number of helper scripts, with layers and layers of
> scripts built on top of each other is really confusing.
I'd agree it's pretty confusing, but only first time.
It's quite easy to understand it.
> 2. The number of files that I have to create within the /debian
> directory is difficult to deal with, and having to create the /debian
> directory within my application directory and being forced to name my
> application directory according to debian rules is very irritating.
You don't need all of them.
> 3. Most of the package creation scripts (I'm refering explicitly to
> dh_make which is supposed to be the proper way of creating a package, as
> discussed in the New Maintainer's Guide) expect that you are building a
> traditional unix application, that's written in C, has ./configure and a
> Makefile. All we are doing in most of our packages is installing some
> files. Why can't that be simple?
Most of the apps are using `./configure && make && make install` so dh_make
tries to use that way.
In fact the only file you need is debian/rules.
It should be Makefile which create your package.
If you really don'y like debhelper's scripts you can always write this
Makefile yourself or use cdbs (`apt-get install cdbs`).
> I feel that RPM creation is better here. One command ('rpmbuild') is
> used. One file, the <package>.spec file, is needed with different
> sections for each part. I can keep my rpm packaging files any where I
> want it, and I don't have to have my application directory conform to
> any debian rules.
I know that rpm is using one file. So what?
I LOVE to split tasks to many files... that's the unix way ;)
And as I mentioned... s/<package>.spec/debian\/rules/ and you still have
one file.
> Why can't debian package building be as simple as 'dpkg-create
> foo.spec'?
>
> Second, why can't I create packages with standard unix commands? Why
> can't I say something like:
> $ tar cvzf data.tgz myapplication/*
> $ tar czvf control.tgz control
> $ tar czvf mypackage-0.1.deb data.tgz control.tgz
Debian uses standard unix commands.
> My main complaint here, is that we really want to be able to build the
> debian packages from any developer workstation. Since we don't impose
> operating system requirements on developers, we can't expect debian to
> be on all workstations.
Sorry. How do you suppose to build rpm without rpm?
> Right now, using Debian to deploy our software seems more and more
> difficult for us. I'd greatly appreciate any advice or comments. All I
> want to be able to do is create a package on any unix system that can be
> installed via apt-get, that simply installs some files, and can use the
> pre/post install/remove scripts. This seems like a simple thing to do,
> but the process seems very difficult.
Is your software free? Can you share it with us?
I'm sure that someone create proper packaging scripts for you.
I'm first to help you if you want.
regards
fEnIo
--
_ Bartosz Fenski | mailto:fenio@o2.pl | pgp:0x13fefc40 | IRC:fEnIo
_|_|_ 32-050 Skawina - Glowackiego 3/15 - w. malopolskie - Polska
(0 0) phone:+48602383548 | Slackware - the weakest link
ooO--(_)--Ooo http://skawina.eu.org | JID:fenio@jabber.org | RLU:172001
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature