RE: making deb packages

[Daniel Boyd]

For a little context, I'm looking to deploy a few GNUstep apps I've written
to a bunch of employees in my office and I think apt would be the most
straightforward way to do this. I really don't want install git everywhere
and compile my source code on 30 computers every time I make a change.

I set up an apt server yesterday and it's working.

I just have no experience making .deb files.

I have a couple GNUstep Library projects that I was attempting to "deb-ify"
first and this is what I did:
Make new directory: "package_amd64" and then create the GNUstep folder
structure inside (e.g. package_amd64/usr/GNUstep/Local/Library ... etc)
I then copied the binaries from my local working directory (i.e.
library/obj/library.so). 

The first time I did this, I just used 'cp' and noticed it wasn't preserving
symlinks, so I've since tried "cp -L" and also "tar cf | tar xf" to make
sure symlinks are preserved.
I then copied the header files into
package_amd64/usr/GNUstep/Local/Library/Headers/Package

I then create the DEBIAN directory containing the control file and then run
"dpkg --build package_amd64"
Which creates a .deb file.

When I deploy that .deb file onto a target machine, all the files appear to
go in the right place. It looks just like my development machine as far as I
can tell. But if I try to compile anything on the target machine against the
library, I get linker errors all over the place. I'm sure I'm doing
something wrong... hoping someone can help me out.

Thanks!


> Can someone provide me with a tutorial on how to make a .deb file from a
GNUstep project?
> 
> I tried to do this myself today and getting linker errors all over the
place..
> 
> I noticed there's a 'deb.make' file under Makefiles/Master. But not sure
how to make it work.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Daniel