discuss: packaging policy
Subject:
Re: packaging policy
From:
Colin Watson ####@####.####
Date:
1 Apr 2002 19:30:32 -0000
Message-Id: <20020401192557.GA13992@arborlon.riva.ucam.org>
On Mon, Apr 01, 2002 at 09:17:24AM -0500, David Merrill wrote:
> To make packages the Debian way, you create a directory named by the
> program and version (e.g., texi2db/pub/texi2db-0.1/, and put the
> .tar.gz there. Then you unpack the .tar.gz so you have the source code
> underneath as well in its normal hierarchy (redundant, I know).
That's actually rather unusual. There are a few Debian packages that
operate that way, but that tends to be because they have complicated
sets of patches to apply and need to do the whole thing at build time
rather than just having all the patches messed together in the .diff.gz.
(dpkg-source doesn't natively support multiple patches yet, unlike RPM -
extensions to allow this are planned but won't be available for some
time yet.)
Conventionally, you simply rename/copy the tarball to
foo_upstream-version.orig.tar.gz (e.g. texi2db_0.1.orig.tar.gz), unpack
it, make any necessary edits, and let the build tools construct a
.diff.gz for you which contains the debian/ directory plus any other
patches you've applied.
(I might have misunderstood what you meant, of course.)
> There is a subdir of there called debian/ which contains lots of
> control files that tell dpkg how to build the package. I feel these
> should go into the cvs. The build system is a part of the code, after
> all.
Opinion among Debian developers about this is rather divided. (Isn't
everything?) I feel that putting the debian/ directory into CVS makes
life difficult when, as often happens, the Debian maintainer becomes a
different person from the upstream maintainer, so I prefer to keep
Debian-specific files and changes out of CVS. It's also simpler to have
the whole debian/ directory in the .diff.gz, because at the moment it
isn't possible to delete files in the Debian diff. None of my packages
have the Debian build system in the upstream CVS repository.
Other people do disagree with me here, and I know people building RPMs
do things differently.
--
Colin Watson ####@####.####
