Bryan-TheBS-Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > As such, this is going to be almost an "AOL-level" help request. > I'm very sorry for this. All I'm looking for is a little direction, > and I'll RTFM the rest. I've gone through much of the FAQ, > Developer's Reference and New Maintainer's Guide, and I'm a bit > "overwhelmed" to say the least. I've downloaded the "hello" source > package as well as "alsa-driver," trying to see how things are done > -- but am confused on the .diff.gz, .desc, orig.tar.gz I get from > apt-get source blah, versus what the docs say about "control files", > etc...
It is very confusing at first; there are a *lot* of tools that interact at different levels. What I would do is try to figure out everything you can on your own, and then come back here with more specific questions. I'll attempt to briefly explain the .diff.gz, .dsc, and .orig.tar.gz, because their purpose and time of generation confused the hell out of me at first. There are two kinds of packages, "Debian native", and not. If in doubt, your package should not be Debian native. A non-Debian native package has a .diff.gz which has the changes made to the upstream package (which is in the .orig.tar.gz). So, you have you upstream source directory unpacked, in a directory named "foo-1.0/". What you'll do is add a debian/ directory which has "control files" that describe the stuff about the package. After this is done, you have a "debianized" source tree. When you use dpkg-buildpackage or debuild to build the package, a .diff.gz of your Debianized source tree versus the upstream source tree will be generated. In order to do this, you must have a tarball with the original source (i.e. not "debianized") in the same directory as your debianized source, and it must be named foo_upstreamversion.orig.tar.gz. Otherwise, dpkg-source will assume your package is Debian native, which is not what you want. An important consequence of this is that the Debian diff is regenerated each time you rerun dpkg-buildpackage or debuild. As for the .dsc, you can probably just ignore it for now. It contains a little metadata about the package, and is also regenerated by dpkg-buildpackage or debuild. Speaking of debuild, I highly recommend it, as it automatically runs lintian for you. Lintian is your friend. Good luck! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
