Re: About creating .deb packages
* martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org> [041230 12:23]:
> also sprach Frank K?ster <frank@debian.org> [2004.12.30.1110 +0100]:
> > on it. Basically, you just need a data.tar.gz and a control.tar.gz with
> > a control file in it (I'm not sure about md5sums).
>
> md5sums is not required, but provided by most packages uses
> debhelper (and others). It's pointless inside the package anyway and
> should probably be created upon installation with debsums instead,
> if you rely on this functionality.
Depends what you want these md5sums for. The way they currently are
used is a very useful tool to check files against unintended corruption.
(Which has helped me quite often to track problems, or to rule out
such problems)
When they are generated at install time, there could be bit-switchers
arising between unpacking them and calculating their checksums. Also
the md5sum files would no longer have a canonical look.[1]
In my eyes each package not having a .md5sums file, especially those
important packages missing them, is a shame.
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
[1] Though the program combining cruft, debsums, checking the authority
of the checksum files and fitting on a floppy is still to be written.
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