Re: Basic tutorial for packaging
Hi Rudolf,
On Tue, Aug 09, 2011 at 11:50:31AM +0200, Rudolf Vavruch wrote:
> I want to package some PHP apps, for starters just something I can
> copy somewhere and run "dpkg -i" on, but with the intention of setting
> up my own private repository in the future. Neither the packages nor
> the repository will be open to the public.
>
> I have made some RPMs, but it seems DEBs are a far more complicated
> beast - and I have absolutely no experience with them.
You're probably best off taking this to the debian-mentors list, btw.
Yes, debian packaging is a bit more involved than the RPM-based packaging,
though this yeilds a number of benefits in terms of expressiveness and
flexibility.
> I have been reading various articles, for example
> (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/School/PackagingWithoutCompiling), but I
> am still lost. The afore mentioned article leaves me with a bunch of
> text files and directories, which is clearly not a deb, and I am not
> sure whether the files I have are even in the correct directories. I
> have read other articles that assume I'm trying to package C code that
> needs to be compiled first.
often, you can take such a package (that does compilation), and just remove
the compilation steps from debian/rules (and perhaps change the Arch field
in debian/control from any->all). dh_make (apt-get install dh-make) will
provide a decent "starter" package, but also see below.
> I feel like I am wasting my time randomly stumbling around the web
> looking for the right information. Is it possible that someone could
> direct me to a basic tutorial about packaging, from start to finished
> deb, and packaging PHP apps
> in particular? Maybe even throw in something about setting up cron
> jobs with a deb? It would be much appreciated.
This is a pretty helpful and semi-authoritative link on getting started
with debian packaging amongst other topics:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/index.en.html
and one final note: there are two popular packaging helpers (debhhelper and
cdbs) that you will often find referenced in the various HOWTO's on
the internetz. Generally speaking, debian related howto's tend to focus
on the former while ubuntu tends to focus on the latter. Either way should
work, though people have favorite-editor-like opinions about which is
actually better (we all know debhelper is the best though:)
sean
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