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There are several descriptions available how to build Debian packages in
general. The main resource might be the repository of Debian packaging
manuals
(especially developers
reference chapter 6, best packaging practices
). There are several
external packaging HOWTOs for example the one from Joe
'Zonker' Brockmeier
.
This howto describes the building of meta packages by using the
cdd-dev
package. It is perfectly possible to build a meta package
as any other normal Debian package but this HOWTO has the only purpose to
describe the profit you might gain by using these tools.
~> cp -a /usr/share/doc/cdd-dev/examples/tasks . ~> cat tasks/README ~> edit tasks/task1 Description: short description long description as in any debian/control file Depends: dependency1, dependency2, ...
For each meta package this skeleton of a debian/control
entry is
needed. All necessary information is available in the directory
/usr/share/doc/cdd-dev/examples/tasks
.
To build any Debian package you always need a directory named
debian
, which contains a certain set of files. The package
cdd-dev
provides a complete set of example files that only have to
be copied and after editing some place holders are ready to use.
~> cp -a /usr/share/doc/cdd-dev/examples/debian . ~> cat debian/README ~> edit debian/control.stub
Now the variables in the file control.stub
change the variables
named _CDD_, _MAINTAINER_ etc. to match the names of the
Custom Debian Distribution to be built. Please note that the file
debian/control
is and has to be a symbolic link to
control.stub
to let the cdd-dev
tools work.
~> edit debian/rules
Also in the debian/rules
the name of the Custom Debian
Distribution has to be inserted where the template contains _CDD_.
Depending from the way the sources.list
should be scanned the
options for the gen-control
call can be adjusted.
Optionally a source tarball can be created by
~> make -f debian/rules dist
This tarball can be moved to any location where the meta packages should be built or the build process is started directly by calling
~> debuild
which also creates a source tarball.
That's all for the very simple case when the meta packages should not contain
user menus. Even if user menus are suggested they are not necessary. The
following paragraphs describe how to use the cdd-dev
tools to
support these menus.
The creation of a common package is optional, but suggested, because it adds
some special features like menus, user groups, and probably more in the future.
It is automatically built by cdd-install-helper
, which is called
in debian/rules
, if the common
directory exists. The
easiest way to create this is as follows:
~> cp -a /usr/share/doc/cdd-dev/examples/common . ~> cat common/README ~> edit common/conf common/control common/common.1
The variables (_CDD_) in these three files have to be adjusted to
the name of the Custom Debian Distribution in question. This
cdd-common
cares for the initialisation of the role
based menu system and might contain adjustments of the general configuration
inside the cdd-common
.
If the meta package cdd-common
will be created
according to these rules all other meta packages will depend automatically from
this common package. For the friends of auto-apt
, a helper
/usr/bin/<meta-package-name>
will be installed as
well, which just prints some information about the meta package. All in all,
the usage of the common package is strongly suggested to have a common registry
for stuff like user roles and possibly other things that will be implementd in
the future.
As explained in User menu tools,
Section 6.3.1 the meta packages can contain user menus. This optional
feature can be implemented easily by using the template from the
cdd-dev
in the following way:
~> cp -a /usr/share/doc/cdd-dev/examples/menu . ~> cat menu/README ~> edit menu/task1 Edit the example to legal menu entries of the dependencies of this meta package ~> cp menu/task1 menu/<meta package name>
A menu file for each task should be created containing valid menu entries for
each dependant package. The easiest way to obtain those menu entries is to
simply copy the original menu entry files that are contained in the packages on
which the meta package will depend. The only thing that has to be changed in
these menu entries is the package field, which has to be changed
from <dependent package>
to
cdd-task
. All other entries might remain
unchanged. This is a good point to check whether the menu entries of the
packages you depend from are formated nicely and print the necessary
information (for instance make use of "hints"). Here the meta
package maintainer has a good chance for quality assurance work, which is also
part of the Custom Debian Distributions issue.
In principle these menu items could be created automatically either at meta
package build time or even better in the postinst
script of the
meta package because it is granted that the needed menu files are installed on
the system, which is not really necessary on the meta package build machine.
This might be implemented in later versions of cdd-dev
. Currently
the policy is that we like to have a little bit of control about the menu
entries for the quality assurance issue mentioned above. Last, but not least,
there are packages that do not provide a menu entry. If this is the case
because the package maintainer just forgot it a bug report should be filed. On
the other hand, there are packages with programs that provide a command line
interface that does not allow a reasonable menu entry. A solution for this
case is provided in the next paragraph.
The idea of the meta package menu is to provide the user with easily viewable traces of any installed package that helps solving everyday tasks. So if there are packages that do not contain a menu, a screen with relevant documentation should be provided in a viewer by the creator of the meta package. Such documentation can be created using the following templates:
~> cp -a /usr/share/doc/cdd-dev/examples/docs . ~> cat docs/README ~> edit docs/task1/dep1 Provide information about a package <dep1> that is a dependency of the meta package <task1>, but does not contain a useful menu entry. ~> cp docs/task1/dep1 docs/task1/<dependent pkg> ~> cp -a docs/task1 docs/<meta package name>
This ensures that our users become aware of all interesting packages on their system. The documentation files should contain hints to man pages to read, URLs that should be visited to learn more about the package or some short introduction how to get started.
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Custom Debian Distributions
23 December 2008tille@debian.org