Re: creating debs

[cjw44@flatline.org.uk (Colin Watson)]

Sven Burgener <svenb@bluewin.ch> wrote:
>I know though that dpkg-deb has the capability to build .deb archives.
>As I know *nothing* more than that, I don't know what to do next to get
>my source tarball (LAME) compiled and installed...?

dpkg-deb is lower-level than you probably want.

Install the devscripts, packaging-manual, maint-guide, debhelper, and
dh-make packages (together with their dependencies), and preferably get
the source for the hello-debhelper package too and examine it. Read the
Packaging Manual and New Maintainer's Guide that you've just installed.

You should find that the following will get you most of the way there:

* Untar the upstream tarball;

* Rename the directory to be of the form packagename-upstreamversion
  (e.g. lame-1.0 or whatever version LAME is at);

* Type 'dh_make' and follow the prompts ("single binary" means "a single
  binary package", by the way, not "there is only one binary executable
  in this package");

* Edit the files in the debian/ subdirectory. The New Maintainer's Guide
  has information on what most of them mean.

Further questions should probably go on the debian-mentors mailing list.

HTH,

-- 
Colin Watson                                     [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]