Re: How to customise package source

[Andrew Luke Nesbit <alnesbit@optushome.com.au>]

On Mon, Aug 19, 2002 at 08:29:04AM +1000, Andrew Luke Nesbit wrote:

[snip]

Sorry for replying to my own post, but I've worked out most of it; the
only thing left that I need to know is how to adjust the version
number of the package to reflect my customisation appropriately.

I have added an entry to the top of debian/changelog:

pine (4.44-an) unstable; urgency=low

  * Added Eduardo's Fancy Headers patch

   -- Andrew Nesbit <alnesbit@optushome.com.au>  Mon, 19 Aug 2002 13:58:21 +1000

(So obviously, this is for the Pine mail reader.)

Now, the problem is with the "an" debian_revision.  The Debian Policy
says this about it:

"It may contain only alphanumerics and the characters + and . (plus and
full stop) and is compared in the same way as the upstream_version is."

It doesn't say that it must start with a digit.

Now, doing

$ debian/rules build

works fine, but

$ debian/rules binary

fails with the following message:

dpkg-deb - error: Debian revision (`an') doesn't contain any digits
dpkg-deb: 1 errors in control file
make[1]: *** [binaryPineTechNotes] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/pine-4.44'
make: *** [binary-indep] Error 2

So the question is this: why is dpkg-deb complaining about the lack of
digits in debian_revision, when the policy states no such requirement?

Thanks,

Andrew.