[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Re: Building deb packages for the Nokia 770 is very easy

[From: Neil Jerram]

"Stephen DeGabrielle" <spdegabrielle at gmail.com> writes:

> I'd really like to just use  'dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b' but it
> spits errors at me;
>
> My problem seems to be that I use ./configure;make;make install to compile.

Me too, and I haven't had a problem with this.

> the Maemo Tutorial seems to want me to
> 'Run autogen.sh to generate application build configures: '

I think that's assuming that you're starting from the developers' CVS
repository for a product.

I recommend starting from the most recently released tarball for the
product in question, and then following the Debian new maintainer
guide.  At least that worked for me.

In outline, in other words:

- Get and unpack a pristine released tarball.

- Go into the root dir of the unpacked tarball.

- Do the dh_make step as described in the new maintainer guide.

- Edit the debian/* files generally as described by the new maintainer
  guide, but removing lots of stuff that the 770 doesn't need or can't
  handle: pre and post scripts, manpage, etc.; also change
  debian/control so that the only dependency is maemo.

- In debian/rules, make two key changes.

  - Change the configure line so that it has
    "--prefix=/var/lib/install/usr".  This means that the package will
    find its files in the right place once it has been installed.

  - Add two lines like this after the $(MAKE) install line:

	mv $(CURDIR)/debian/PACKAGE/var/lib/install/* $(CURDIR)/debian/PACKAGE/
	rm -rf $(CURDIR)/debian/PACKAGE/var

    (replacing PACKAGE by your package name).  This means that the
    files in the .deb appear to be rooted at /usr, which is what the
    770's application installer needs.

- dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

Good luck!

     Neil