[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Building a binary package?

[From: Kuisma Salonen]

> I am new to the Nokia 770 development (as well as debian packages) and have
> recently finished setting up the development environment (Maemo 2.0). So
> far
> I have got everything up and running and I have been able to build a simple
> Hello World application from scratchbox. I ran it in the emulator (Xephyr)
> and now I am trying to run it in the Nokia 770. I have been trying to build
> a binary package that includes the helloworld executable, but so far I have
> not been successful. Is there any simple way to quickly build a binary
> package from my helloworld executable? I have been able to build the
> maemopad example package, but since my project has only 1 file, I was
> wondering if there is a simpler way to create my package (avoiding all the
> makefiles). BTW, using dpkg-deb I managed to build a package but the 770
> complained it was not installable.

As you are obviously wanting only a binary package, I am forgetting
about debian policies (dirty me). My guess about what happened here is
that when you built it with dpkg-deb, it archived your file into the
package but was lacking of (at least proper) control file.

More info about deb (binary) packages:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-debpkg.html

(Wasn't actually best possible article, but couldn't find better for
now.) Anyway, to understand debian bin packages better, I would
recommend reverse engineering. So first take any IT2006 bin deb package
and take a closer look at it. .deb packages are actually ar packages, so
you can extract one using 'ar x'. You should manage from this point, and
after a while you should be able to build your own bin package.

Now if you actually would make into your source package directory called
'debian' and put there proper 'rules' file there (please correct me if i
am missing something (something that is NOT invoked by debian/rules)),
you should have working source package. However at this point it might
be easier to stick with debhelper and debian policy, so eventually this
could be useful reading:

http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals