[maemo-developers] Debhelper 7

[From: Marius Vollmer]

"Denis-Courmont Remi (Nokia-D/Helsinki)" <Remi.Denis-Courmont at nokia.com>
writes:

> On Tuesday 15 December 2009 22:10:39 ext Jeremiah Foster, you wrote:
>> > * debian/compat:  7 -> 5
>> > * debian/control: Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7) -> debhelper (>= 5)
>> > * And maybe comment out a few dh_* calls from debian/rules, which
>> > might not exist on level 5
>> 
>> One of the huge advantages of moving to debhelper 7 compat is that you can
>>  have your debian/rules files look like this:
>> 
>> #!/usr/bin/make -f
>> %:
>> 	dh $@
>> 
>> Simple. You pass everything off to debhelper.
>
> That takes care of the packaging part, but not the building part or
> does it? 

It also takes care of building.  Check the documentation of the "Build
system options" in man debhelper and look into
/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Debhelper/Buildsystem.

The "dh" program itself is a simple sequencer that runs a score of dh_*
utilities in the right order, including the new dh_auto_configure,
dh_auto_build, and dh_auto_install.  These dh_auto_* utiltities can
recognize a number of buildsystems, like autotools, Makefile.PL,
setup.py, etc.

> AFAICT, if you really want short and implicit rules, you could use CDBS. That 
> works fine with any debhelper from version 4 and up.

It's a matter of taste, I guess.  I personally find cdbs impenetrable,
what with the million variables that you need to set.  Debhelper really
doesn't need to be wrapped up to make it easy.

(The main thing missing from debhelper IMO is better support for -dbg
packages.)