Re: Source questions
C. Brewer said:
> 1)Is it required to make .debs out of these for total integration with
> apt/dpkg? And if so, having never done any package building whatsoever,
> is this something that any user can easily learn?
if you want apt/dpkg to recognize this software you will need
it in packaged format yes. is it easy to learn? I think it would
be very difficult to package KDE and QT from source they are complex
applications. Simple ones would be easy(just a few files). some source
packages come with a debian/ directory which has debian scripts and
files used to create packages, if there is such a directory making
a package can be very easy. Otherwise, I reccomend trying to find
source debian packages for the software you use, and recompile them
using the options you want, so it creates a debian package with
the optimizations you have on the current software
> 2)From locating existing files/dirs on this box for qt2 and kde2 I find
> files for both programs listed in /usr/lib and for kde2, in /etc. I
> originally built the sources for qt under /opt/qt3, because opt is empty
> just on about any box I ever install. Instructions for qt say there is
> no make install needed because everthing is run from the qt dir, you
> just need to export $QTDIR properly. The same basically holds true for
> kde in regards to exporting $KDEDIR properly.
yes, luckily QT and KDE can live successfully in their own directories
they do not need to litter files all over the place. If your installing
KDE or QT from source I reccomend you stick to this, it will make it
easier to maintain the system. You may have to add some enviornment
varibles to point to the libraries and include files if you plan to
compile code against that version of KDE/QT(see manpage on how
to do this). But besides that... /opt or /usr/local is a good place
for 3rd party applications. I would not reccomend installing 3rd party
files directly into /usr/lib /usr/bin etc, because they are not packaged,
the packaging system is not aware of them and can overwrite the files
without warning(or delete them). by putting them in /opt/ or /usr/local
the package system is less likely to do anything to the files.
nate
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