Re: Packaging task for newbies: Separate pink-pony into program and data

2013/9/13 lesleyb <lesleyb@herlug.org.uk>

On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 05:28:30PM +0200, Miriam Ruiz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Ive just uploaded pink-pony 1.3.1-1 to Debian [1] [2], and I've noticed
> that I should have separated the packages in program and data [3], instead
> of having it all packaged into one single package. The main advantage of
> that approach -usually done with games and with other programs that have
> considerable architecture-independent data- is that the space occupied in
> the mirrors is much less.
>
> I was considering fixing it myself and doing a newer upload, but I thought
> about what we were talking at DebConf about being able to provide
> reasonably easy tasks for people who are starting, so there it goes. If
> anyone is willing to do it, they will of course count with my help and my
> time, and -obviously- I will be available for doing the upload to the
> archive.
>
> Greetings and thanks,
> Miry
>
>
> [1] https://code.google.com/p/pink-pony/
> [2] http://packages.debian.org/pink-pony
> [3]
> http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/best-pkging-practices.html#bpp-archindepdata

Well I have been thinking about trying to package something for a little while.

Here's a question though, the package is in sid and I'm running wheezy. Does
that matter for packaging?

Not really, as long as you have all the dependencies available in wheezy, which is the case. I use pbuilder to create packages in a clean sid environment, no matter what I'm using in my desktop, but don't care about that for the moment.

The brief answer in this case is, yes.

The current version -everything's working except the separation between program and data- is not yet available in the archive, I uploaded it a short while ago, but it will soon be available at http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/pink-pony/. At that point, the easy way to check it would be:

dget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/pink-pony/pink-pony_1.3.1-1.dsc

cd pink-pony-1.3.1

debuild

With build-essential, devscripts and the building dependencies installed. As it will compile and run without problem (provided that you have a OpenGL 2.0 capable card available, or you have emulation via software as I do), you will see that it will be enough for developing this package :)

I've explained it quite quickly, but of course if you're interested I can explain it more in detail, step by step. Wanna try it? :)

Greetings,

Miry