[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] How to handle packaging for debian-native packages?

[From: Ed Bartosh]

On Mon, 2006-07-24 at 23:00 -0400, ext Peter Kahle wrote:
> How are people handling packaging when the upstream already includes a 
> debian directory?
> 
> On http://wiki.debian.org/Emdebian_Nokia there's mention of using a 
> DEBIAN_DIR environment variable to specify an alternate directory, but 
> it doesn't seem to work for me in scratchbox. Is there anything special 
> I have to do besides setting the variable?
You should use patched debian utilities, which understand DEBIAN_DIR
directory. Unfortunately they're not included into Maemo development
environment.
If you're interested I can put experimental emdebian devkit for
scratchbox somewhere for downloading. It contains patched
apt,dpkg,debhelper,cdbs and some other packaging tools.

Here is draft of emdebian packaging rules:
http://wiki.debian.org/Embedded_Debian_packaging_rules?highlight=%
28CategoryEmdebian%29
And there is also example of making Emdebian package out of Debian one.
If someone is interested in the approach I can put this example in
emdebian wiki.

> Alternately, would it work to 
> have more than one control file or other necessary files, and have the 
> first action in the rules set up the symlinks needed to set the 
> environment right?
> 
It might work, but from my point of view it's difficult to maintain.

-- 
Ed Bartosh <eduard.bartosh at nokia.com>
Nokia-M/Helsinki