Chris Jones wrote:
What I have done so far is pretty much what is describe in the above:
. apt-get source ..
. build-dep ..
. debuild ..
. dpkg -i ..
The process appears to work - as tested on gnu/screen - when I'm just
recreating the same deb that I would install via apt-get.
That's a good procedure. It's what I do when I need to rebuild a package.
One problem, though, is that since the build is pretty much automated, I'm not sure how I could add --xxx configure options that override the defaults. In particular after reading the man page I wasn't able to find an option that would let me achieve this.
The configure script gets called in debian/rules. Editing the file you should be able to find a call to it and modify appropriately.
Another concern is what kind of naming standard I should/could adopt for my custom .debs so that they integrate smoothly with the apt packaging system. In other words.. in a way that will be easy to manage over time and not interfere with possible future apt-get actions, such as upgradesto a new release etc.
One possibility is to increase the package revision and append something like '~yourname0'. If the package is 1.4.5-3, you make 1.4.5-4~something0, which is greater than 1.4.5-3 but smaller than 1.4.5-4 or any newer upstream version. But there are other possibilities regarding suffixes.