-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Brian Servis wrote:
> The main problem with building the sources is that the debian source > packages do not have any kind of dependencies like the binary packages > do. So apt does not know that you need a certain -dev package to > compile the package of interest. If a package build fails during a > compile it will usually fail on a missing header file. Try using the > contents search at http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages.html to find > out what binary package contains that header. Another rule of thumb > that I use is to look at the package dependices and if for example it > needs libc6 then it will most likely need libc6-dev installed to be > able to compile. Also, contrib and nonfree packages can give trouble, if they need devel files for a nonfree library to compile. A few weeks ago there was a typo in the sources for the plugger package ("flose" versus "fclose"). Being the impatient type, i wanted to recompile it myself until the official replacement made its way to the mirrors (only 2 days anyway, IIRC). But it needed some header files from a netscape sdk... > Yes it will create a directory read the apt-get man page. It has to > extract the source archive somewhere. If the build is successfull you > will have the .deb and the source tree in the current directory where > you ran apt-get. I have created a directory for all my source packages > and just cd to it before running apt-get source. If it built it > succsefully you then have to manually install with dpkg -i. $ apt-get --download-only source package will get the .orig.tar.gz, .diff.gz, and .dsc files. $ apt-get source package will extract them into the subdirectory. It won't try to create the deb. You can easily do it manually. $ apt-get --compile source package will extract them into the subdirectory and attempt to build the deb. $ cd /usr/local/debs # or whatever directory your debs are in $ touch override.local $ dpkg-scanpackages . override.local > Packages $ echo "deb file:/usr/local/debs /" >> /etc/apt/sources.list will show your local packages properly in dselect. Edit override.local to suit, and rerun the dpkg-scanpackages line whenever you update the directory. - -- finger for PGP public key. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBN8NVab7M/9WKZLW5AQGCagP/ZuMs1g2i/kncPv/oriuCor2+vvm5rLFg H2S0+dEbtjPS61HcsLfTf/Ix0tAopmW5DYZf8Y6RMUX8omC/9ZUjW385d7hdrinT MWmfhQPBwshhB3nIP+Rd6K+YmAE4Sd6nQZd4QOsVy8hl8flHt7U3bAHA+MTZT/Cx fY1O1YOMdrI= =c0SK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----