[maemo-developers] Packaging Libraries

[From: Jeremiah Foster]

On Oct 25, 2009, at 21:59, Graham Cobb wrote:

> 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.

Yes, that is a great idea Graham. One that I should have thought of. I  
will also post it as blog posts and stuff it into talk.m.o as well. :)
>
>>> 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.

This has also been my experience.

>> 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).

I have joined the MUD project, for two reasons. One, to learn about  
MUD, and two, to add minimae to MUD. As I get more involved, I hope to  
be able to contribute. I do think it is good however to be able to go  
through the process without MUD however, to get people a feel for how  
to build a package by hand, to see the details. I think they end up  
having a better understanding of the process. Then they can transition  
to MUD.

Now we just need to get MUD to do recursive package building and  
package all the missing dependencies!

Best,

Jeremiah