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

[From: Neil Jerram]

Xavier Calbet <xcalbet at yahoo.es> writes:

>   I have had problems with the regular
> building of packages with dpkg-buildpackage, etc.
> When I reach the "..as described in the 
> new maintainer guide.." I get lost. Does any
> novice 
> really find this guide useful?

Well, I had never built a Debian package before, when I built my first
package for the 770.

If you want to say where you get lost, I'd be happy to try to explain.

> I also get lost in the "but removing lots of stuff
> that the 770 doesn't need or can't
>   handle" because I do not know what the 770
> cannot handle, unless I do trial and error 
> (and of course that takes forever).

OK.  The only files I think you need are the following.

changelog - This should follow the format specified by the NM guide,
but you are free to put as much or as little actual information as you
like.  The debian-changelog mode for Emacs makes it trivial to get the
format right.

compat - I've actually no idea about this; I just left it as generated
by dh_make.

control - Easiest by example:

Source: guile-gnome-dev
Section: devel
Priority: optional
Maintainer: Neil Jerram <neil at ossau.uklinux.net>
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 4.0.0)
Standards-Version: 3.6.0

Package: guile-gnome-dev
Architecture: any
Depends: maemo
Description: Guile language bindings for the GNOME platform
 Guile language bindings for the GNOME platform

copyright - Per NM guide.  (Tedious, but important for free software.)

docs - Any files that you want to be installed in
$prefix/share/doc/<package>, like this:

AUTHORS
NEWS
README

info - Not sure, but probably not needed.

rules - As generated by dh_make, plus the two changes described in my
previous email.

>   By the way I am trying to build the deb packages
> for perl/PDL which should make the Nokia770
> a powerful calculator with graphics. I already
> have the code running on the Nokia 770.

Sounds fun; good luck with the packaging.

    Neil