RE: GS in Debian

[Frederico . S . Muñoz]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Frith-Macdonald [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: quinta-feira, 29 de Novembro de 2001 17:28
> To: Frederico.S.Muñoz
> Cc: address@hidden; Nahuel Greco
> Subject: Re: GS in Debian
> 
> 
> 
> On Thursday, November 29, 2001, at 05:02 PM, Frederico.S.Muñoz wrote:
> 
> >
> > Indeed. I'll write him to know the general status of the 
> packages and 
> > talk
> > about Gorm and
> > other GS prospective packages.
> >
> > The email address always made me think that GS developers were in 
> > charge of
> > the debs...
> >
> > I'll keep everyone current and post further developments ASAP.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Are you aware that the GNUstep make package builds rpms for you, and 
> could
> probably be relatively easily be enhanced to build debs?
> 
> I think that would be worth doing if the debian people could 
> be persuaded
> to accept/use such automatically generated packages.
> 

Yes, I did know that there is a rpm target (make rpm IIRC).

I know little about the way rpm's work, so it's difficult for me to say if
the same solution is feasible
in what deb's are concerned. One solution comes to mind however:

Making a deb modifies two different things: the creation of a /debian folder
(this one is easy enough
because it generally stays the same if the build process/flags/etc remains
equal) and modification of
upstream code to obey Debian Policy (and this is where it is tricky). Little
things like making a program
execute "less" have to be changed (in this example changed to execute
"sensible-pager"). The Makefile
generally needs to be touched up.

Anyway, since the /debian could just be left alone and only changed when
build process options are changed
it all comes down to the diff file. For what I've saw of the package there's
a possibility that automatic creation
of debs could be acomplished (because GNUstep's own build process is an
exception and is rather self-contained).

I'll have a look at it. It would indeed be nice to do a make deb. But it's
extremely hard to guarantee that a mechanism
that does that will endure forever without modifications (I'm assuming that
the "make rpm"  is rahter straightforward and
is always valid unless the format of the rpm changes).

In the end if such a mechanism generates lintian-clean and Policy conformant
packages they will surely be accepted/use.
They always need to be uploaded by a Debian Developer though (I don't know
what is the practice of rpm's reaching RedHat...
anyway most Debianers rely on the standard sources to get the software,
whereas RedHat ppl are much more likely to
install packages made by a third-party).


Best Regards,

fsm
--
Frederico S. Muñoz
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young : address@hidden
IIES : address@hidden
Debian Project: address@hidden

**
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Solitaire.
**
  -Adep