Re: Help, the template debian/rules is too simple

[Andrew Reid <reidac@bellatlantic.net>]

On Monday 02 November 2009 23:42:54 waixy zhou wrote:
> I admit what I'm doing is a little beyond my current skill, after all, I'm
> just a user of Debian not a developer. But I think it is better using
> apt/dpkg to manage the software/tools I need in my research than just using
> "./configure && make && make install". I prefer to use the ready-made
> packages if there is any. I googled, but unfortunately I can't find any.

  Do you know about "stow"?  It's kind of a poor-man's package
management system.  It's pretty sophisticated, but the vanilla
use-case for it is, you build applications inside a directory,
/usr/local/stow/<app-name>, and the installer creates bin, lib,
share, and so forth inside that directory.

  Then you run "stow <app-name>" from /usr/local/stow, and it
creates sym-links so that your software shows up under /usr/local/bin
and /usr/local/lib and so forth, just as if you had built and installed
it with --prefix=/usr/local.

  The beauty of this, of course, is that you can *un*-stow the 
thing, when you upgrade or when you're finished with it, and it 
cleanly removes it without leaving piles of cruft in /usr/local.

  This might be a more appropriate solution to your problem, if
your software doesn't have complicated dependencies.

				-- A.
-- 
Andrew Reid / reidac@bellatlantic.net