[Q] creating deb from source...just curious
Although I successfully created a powerpc deb of qmail, I have
several questions about my methods.
I knew I need to start with the source, so using apt-get and the
following sources.list line:
#deb-src ftp://ftp.eecs.umich.edu/debian stable main contrib non-free
I retrieved (If i remember exactly) qmail_1.0.3-14.diff.gz,
qmail_1.0.3-14.dsc, and qmail_1.0.3.orig.tar.gz. As I soon found
out, I couldn't make these into a powerpc, even though there was a
debian directory in qmail...tar.gz which referred to making a deb
package. Compile would always fail.
O.K. second try, I instead found another package
qmail-src_1.03-14.deb, so I thought I would try this one.
Installing this package, however, in and of itself did not create a
new powerpc deb based on this source. Instead, it generated in
/usr/src/qmail a folder with all its source, just like I found in the
previously downloaded .tar file. Yet, in this one, there was no
debian directory. After installing qmail-src_1.03-14.deb, the
install notified me that I would have to build the powerpc deb myself
using: build-qmail.
I couldn't find any such command, until I looked at the debian
directory of the previously untarred qmail_1.0.3.orig.tar.gz.
Curiously, there was a file name build-PACKAGE. After several
attempts at running this script, it turned out that I needed to
rename it 'build-qmail' Running the script with this name indeed
produced what I needed: qmail_1.03-14_powerpc.deb.
So I got really lucky. I just happened to find the build-PACKAGE
script stashed among source code that i couldn't compile myself. So
my question is: where was I suppose to get build-PACKAGE if I hadn't
downloaded the original tar source? Is it automatically provided
somewhere by another package, and I just couldn't find it? If so,
which one and where is it installed in Debian potato? Seems like
there should be a README or a HOWTO about making such debs.
Thanks,
--
W. Crowshaw
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