On Tue, 7 Jan 1997, Richard Jones wrote: > > Hiya, i thought I saw someone mention that upgrades to existing > packages were available via diffs to the source. Thus allowing the download > of just the diff rather than the entire .orig source ( assuming of > course you have the source to the original package online). Now I > checked out the FAQ and a few other places and see no mention of this. > If this feature is available can someone tell me where I can read about > it, if it isn't is something like this (or perhaps even something > similar to FreeBSD's CVS upgrade system) likely to become available? > First, let me make clear that we are not talking about upgrading binary packages here. This is strictly a source packaging issue.
That said, you are referring to the new source package format, which has many nice features, most notably the one you referred to. First, not all packages have been converted to the new source format, so you will see some packages in the old format. (I am going to assume that everyone knows how the old format worked) The new format consists of a source tree in package_xxx.orig.tar.gz that unpacks into a source tree as nearly identical to that provided by the upstream provider as is possible; a diff.gz file containing the differences between this source and the debianized version of the tree; and a "Debian Source Control" file .dsc that will tell the packaging tools how to unpack the source file. If you have installed the dpkg and dpkg-dev packages, more recent that 1.4.0 you will be able to unpack the source using these files with the following command: dpkg-source -x package_xxxx.dsc in the directory containing the orig.tar.gz, diff, and dsc files. This will generate a source tree you can build with: dpkg-buildpackage Hope this helps, Dwarf ------------ -------------- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (904) 656-9769 Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tallahassee, FL 32308 ------------ If you don't see what you want, just ask -------------- -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]