Re: Can one "fake" a Debian package?

[Jeff.Lessem+Debian@Colorado.EDU]

Pollywog <pollywog@shadypond.com> writes:

> > I have QT 1.42 installed from the source tarball. Unfortunately, my KDE
> > installation was in the form of Debian packages, and now I get
> > "kde-whatever depends on qt-142" errors from dselect and apt-get. How can
> > I convince my system that QT is installed? Is there a file I can edit?
> > 
> > - thanks, Bill 
> 
> I had this problem too and got around it by installing the qt debs AND the
> source as well.
> 
> I don't know if that is a correct way to do things, but it worked for me.

I just created a local package that provides (in the dpkg sense)
whatever packages I do not want to install from deb files, for
whatever reason.

I created a directory tree and file:
local/DEBIAN/control
where control is:

Package: local
Version: 1.00
Architecture: all
Essential: no
Provides: tex, latex, texinfo, dvips, dvipsk, xdvi, metafont
Maintainer: "Jeff Lessem" <Jeff.Lessem@Colorado.EDU>
Description: Provides for packages that I prefer to maintain myself

This is just my example.  You probably want to look through
/var/lib/dpkg/available to see what packages qt Provides:.

Then from ../local, run "dpkg-deb -b local" and local.deb will be
created.  Then use "dpkg -i local.deb" to install your packages.  It
contains no files, it simply tells dpkg that whatever packages are listed 
on Provides: are installed.

-- 
Jeff Lessem.