RE: getting dh-make-perl working

["Julian Mehnle" <bulk@mehnle.net>]

Jens Porup wrote:
> But I remain confused on some very fundamental points.
>
> For instance, if I hand build my rules file, how do "execute it"?
> ./rules doesn't work. And 'make a-rules-target' doesn't work because
> make wants a file named Makefile.
> [...]
> It looks to me like the best way for me to do this is to just build
> my debian/ directory from scratch. But then what do I DO with the
> damn thing after I've built it?

The point of creating the Debian package control files by hand is not
being able to build the package with some DH_VERBOSE flag set or something
like that.  Rather, the point is not having to rely on dh-make-perl, which
(1) is a hack (no offense!) for people who don't know how to manually
create the Debian package control files, and (2) does not currently yet
support Module::Build-based packages.

After you created the Debian package control files by hand (which is not
hard), you effectively have the unpacked source for a native Debian
package.  From any Debian source package, you can build binary package(s)
with the `dpkg-buildpackage` command (you may want to read its man-page).

For starters, you can follow my Perl package release checklist (ignore the
CVS parts if you're not using CVS):

  http://julian.io.link-m.de/doc/perl-pkg-release-checklist