Re: How to create a metapackage

[humbert.olivier.1@free.fr]

Hi,
I'll tell you how I do mines but keep in mind that I'm not a debian developpers. I may learn things as well if some debian developpers would answer.


> De: "Ole Streicher" 
> 
> * Should it be native or not?

I'd say native as you will not ship any upstream source code within it. Will you ?


> * How to declare dependencies?
> 
> I guess that they should be either "Recommends", or "Suggests", but not
> "Depends", right? (So that one can deinstall a single package without
> deleting all others)

I'd say the packages you want to pull with your metapackage need to be in "Depends".

Doing that, the installation of your meta package will pull the packages you want to be actually installed.
If afterwards, you want to remove one of those packages, it will tell you that it will remove as well the meta-package but not all the packaged pulled by the meta-package.

It is surely configurable, I'm talking about the basic installation of synaptic.


>* What is the usual source layout?
> 
> Is this just a "debian/ subdir, containing "compat", "control",
> "changelog" "source/format", "copyright"?

I'd say yes

>  What about "rules"? Should it be empty in the simplest case?

Mines are just made of :

#! /usr/bin/make -f

%:
	dh $@


Hope that helps, and hope I am right here.
Don't forget once again to take advice from a real debian-dev, not just a learner as I am.

Cheers,
Olivier