On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 03:54:39PM -0800, Maria Nelson wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Before a program can be turned into a Debian package, it should be build-able
> with just the regular ./configure, make, make install sequence. Is that
> correct?
>
> Also, when you go to build a package, and it doesn't build, what are your
> options?
you should make sure you have read whatever info the author(s) have
written about building it. Hopefully that did not leave something out.
If they did, file a bug [with a patch] if possible. There is also the
possibility that the author(s) might have used a different distro and
Debian's version might not be exactly the same, leading to an error.
> Do you contact that upstream author?
I would expect for the packager to do some work before they contact the
author(s). Like what I mentioned above. The next thing is to 'google'
for similar build error message. Find any mailing list where the package
is discussed and possibly any IRC channel. Talking to other folks in a
similar situation might lead to a hint towards fixing the issue. If you
then have some issue that no one else can solve, then contacting the
author(s) would be something to do. At least from my experience in the
FLOSS world, we don't put up artificial barriers for collaboration. You
can't email/irc with the authors of MS word unless you are a large
multnational company. We don't play like that, we share.
It just dawned on me that you wrote this email to DW, so hopefully you
do not confront any unfriendly people in the process of your technical
discussions. I dont recall ever an author being nasty about my asking a
question. Maybe the ocassional troll on IRC :)
> Is that actually a reasonable thing to do? Or do you actually try to
> debug it?
The number of people who get a 'whole in one' in Golf are about the same
as the number of people with 'perfect programs'. And besides, 'hacking'
the code is the only way to grok it. Learning by reading the source.
Its what we do ;)
This is supposed to be fun, if its not, well, why do it?
Have fun and happy hacking.
Kev
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