RE: Possible New User - Intro

["Kevin Ross" <kross@statuspro.tv>]

> One package I use heavily is the Hercules mainframe emulator. 
>  The package
> available for Arch Linux was a little outdated but it took me 
> no time at all
> to create a package via ABS with the lastest Hercules 
> version.  The process
> basically amounts to:
> 
> $ abs          <-- populates /var/abs with with current PKGBUILD files
> 
> copy Hercules's PKGBUILD file to another directory, such as
> /var/abs/local/hercules
> 
> Edit the PKGBUILD file, update the version number and md5 checksum
> 
> $ makepkg      <-- in the new directory
> 
> The package is built and a package file is created that can 
> be installed via
> the standard package manger.

Building your own Debian packages is actually quite easy.  See:

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/336

If you're just grabbing the latest upstream tarball,
there's really no need to build a package.  The only real benefit
of creating a package is to share with someone.  Just do the
usual, untar, make, and make install.  You can install all
of your locally built stuff into /usr/local/... without any
problems at all.

However, if you want to share your packages with others, so
that they can just install without having to build from source
like you did, then by all means, build a package and share!

-- Kevin