Re: Building Debian Packages
On Tue, 2 Sep 1997, Will Lowe wrote:
> I'd reccomend the "Makeing a debian Package" page, which is pretty good
> for small/single packages. It sure did help me understand the basics. If
> you're compiling some humungous multi-package beast (;cough Xwindows) it's
> probably not your first package. Anyway, you can find the above page via
> the debian doc page or at
>
> http://fatman.mathematik.tu-muenchen.de/~schwarz/debian-doc/(no linebreak)
> manuals/make_package.html
As the author of that article, I am gratified that someone actually finds
it useful. But I will be the first person to tell you it has
shortcomings. So I am in the process of rewriting it and I would
appreciate any comments/criticisms/requests from the Debian public.
Here are some I've received since I wrote the article back in February.
It's too easy. This is by design. My target audience was people like me.
People with some background in programming but not neccessarily in a Unix
environment. Big strong Unix he-men should have no problem with the real
documentation. :-) Even they may be able to use my doc as a high-level
overview.
It's too hard. One suggestion I had was to include stuff about gcc
options, makefiles etc. There is a need for something like this but it's
potentially a huge topic and I wanted to stay focused on the topic of
creating a Debian package.
It doesn't cover the advanced things you can do with a package. I agree.
Useful topics such as conf files, install scripts and integrating with the
menu package are not covered at all. They will be.
It doesn't explain how to become a Debian maintainer, upload your package
etc. I have mixed feelings about this. You don't need to be Debian
maintainer to want to create .debs. Though I am one now, I originally
learnt to do this so I could integrate some local stuff that will never
see the light of day. Also maybe someday commercial linux apps will come
in .deb format and their developers will need to know how to create them.
They won't care about the Debian organization though. On the other hand
Debian lives and dies by its volunteers and people who want to contribute
should be encouraged. So there will probably be something.
Anything else? Spelling and grammar correctiona are also gratefully
accepted!
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