Re: Help with my Debian package for Orange

[Christian Kastner <debian@kvr.at>]

On 07/01/2011 05:21 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> On Jul 01, 2011, at 01:00 AM, Mitar wrote:
> 
>> I will not yet use "dh" as it looks too magical for me for now. I
>> would like to understand what is happening. And first have a working
>> package. Then I can play with cleaning it up. Or would it be easier to
>> just let dh do everything? I doubt it can be magical enough.
> 
> Personally, I find dh preferable, even with the magical aspects.  You can
> always set DH_VERBOSE=1 to get decent output about exactly what it's doing.  I
> think dh and dh_python2 make a great way to very easily package up most Python
> libraries.  I have some recommendations to add for extnsion modules coming
> soon to the dh_python2 transition wiki page.

It's definitely preferable for an experienced packager, it can be
confusing as hell though to the commencing packager because in order to
understand dh syntax, you must first understand what debian/rules does,
ie the actual process of building a package from source.

Additionally, stuff like "dh_installmanpages" (regular or dh syntax) is
completely obvious to us, but the commencing packager
  * must first understand what that command tries to accomplish
  * must understand how it accomplishes it
  * must understand when it accomplishes it (at what stage)
  * must realize that even though it is a quasi-standard, it it "just"
    a helper, and there are other ways to accomplish the same thing
  * etc

At least, that's the way I saw it when I started packaging about a year
ago, and getting familiar was a time-consuming process.

I'd recommend getting started with either the New Maintainainer's
Guide[0] or the Packaging Tutorial Yarik posted, and probably with a
simpler package. Once the basics are solid, stuff like dh (and other
helpers) become natural.

Christian

[0] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/