[maemo-developers] Packaging Libraries

[From: Graham Cobb]

On Friday 23 October 2009 14:10:52 Marius Gedminas wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 02:13:57PM +0200, Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> > The best way to go about it might be to first pull down your source
> > package from upstream. Upstream is usually debian and that is easy to
> > do if you are on a debian, or even debian-like, machine:

...<good description snipped>...

Jeremiah,

How about creating a Wiki page with a worked example of porting a Debian 
library, showing the step-by-step process and the changes which should be 
made (like setting a maintainer and changing the version number)?  I am sure 
it would be useful for a number of people.

> > Of course, this all is a bit of a gloss, there may be issues, like
> > other dependencies not yet solved, and/or versions that are out of
> > sync, etc. But once you start this process, feel free to fire off
> > questions to this list or on IRC #maemo with error messages and you
> > should find that there are often people who will help you. I certainly
> > will, but there are others as well who are very knowledgeable about
> > the platform.

In my experience the biggest problem is the dependencies.  You often find the 
package you want is easy to port but it depends on a bunch of other things 
that have not yet been ported!  So you have to start the process again with 
those.  But the more we can encourage people to port, the easier that problem 
will become over time.

> There's also MUD Builder which attempts to automate most of the
> downloading-from-debian-patching-and-rebuilding steps:
> http://mud-builder.garage.maemo.org/

Personally I normally use MUD.  It allows me to easily handle things like 
setting the maintainer, description, upgrade description, bugtracker, etc. 
(and the section if it is a user package) and to easily re-port a newer 
version.  If there are things MUD could do to make the process easier or more 
general, I am keen that we extend it to do them (if Jaffa agrees, of course, 
as he is the project leader).

Graham