Re: Creating deb packages

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

The documentation on how to make a Debian package is in the package
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/unstable/binary-i386/base/dpkg_1.3.14.deb .
(The package version number will soon change, and the package may split
into base/dpkg* and devel/dpkg-dev* in the near future.)

Install that package, and then you will find the directories:

	/usr/doc/dpkg/programmer.html
	/usr/doc/dpkg/policy.html

These contain HTML documents for the Debian Programmer's Manual, and the
Debian Policy Manual. Read them with any web browser.

There is also a prototype "hello world" package
that you should use as a skeleton for your own package.
You can find that in the three files:

ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/unstable/source/misc/hello_1.3-12.dsc
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/unstable/source/misc/hello_1.3.orig.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/unstable/source/misc/hello_1.3-12.diff.gz

Put those in a directory and run "dpkg-source -x hello_1.3-12.dsc". That
will extract the tar and create the directories "hello_1.3" and
"hello_1.3.orig", and will use patch to apply the diff to the files
in "hello_1.3".

With those two manuals and the "hello" package source, you will have
everything you need to build a Debian package. I think you'll find it
quite easy.

If you are not running Debian and just want to look at the manuals,
you can get the file
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/project/experimental/dpkg_1.3.14_i386.nondebbin.tar.gz . That is a gzipped tar file containing all of the files of the
"dpkg" package for installation on non-Debian systems.

	Thanks

	Bruce