Re: How-do-I make a non-native Debian package?

[Kees Leune <cjleune@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 22:59:29 -0500, William Ballard
<nospam_50115@alltel.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 01:23:06AM -0300, Lucas Wall wrote:
> > - make dist
> > - copy the tar.gz to a temp dir with the appropiate .orig Debian name.
> > - unpack the tar.gz and copy the debian dir into it.
> > - let dpkg-buildpackage (or similar) compile and generate the diff file,
> > etc.
> 
> Well, that's a bit of magic.  If you are in a directory foo-x.y, and run
> dpkg-buildpackage, it makes a "native" package.  If you simply have a
> foo-x.y.orig sibling directory, it makes a "non-native" package (and
> concidentally removes the .orig directory).  That's wierd.

I generally do it a little different. Say my upstream has a new
package out which is called foo-1.0.tar.gz. I generally copy it to the
file foo_1.0.orig.tar.gz and then untar it. Make sure it untars in a
directly that follows the packagename-version convention(e.g.
foo-1.0).  Continue as normal and fakeoot dpkg-buildpackage works just
fine.

Note the _ (underscore) instead if the - (dash) between package name
and version number This confused me in the beginning. Also, make sure
that your debian/changelog contains a version number like 1.0-1,
rather than just 1.0. The version number represents upstream version
1.0, Debian package version 1.

Using these two guideliness, my packages compile cleanly into
non-native packages. Section 2.4 Initial "debianization" of the New
Maintainer guide does mention the underscore requirement, although it
is easy to glance over.

-kees
-- 
Kees Leune <kees@leune.org>