This one time, at band camp, Stephen Gran said: > This one time, at band camp, Simon Richter said: > > Stephen, > > > > On Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 02:21:07PM -0500, Stephen Gran wrote: > > > I am putting together a .deb of cosmos (the xscreensaver module) for > > > personal consumption - I don't think it's suitable to go into Debian > > > proper, as upstream seems to have disappeared (at any rate, the site > > > where I originally downloaded the source is gone, and google returns > > > only old hits). > > > > As long as it's maintained there is no problem with the package going > > into Debian -- it may even happen that someone finds the package useful > > and takes over upstream development. > > > > > The problem I am having with putting it together is > > > that in order for it to build from source, it needs a compiled > > > xscreensaver source tree to pull some headers and other things from. > > > > Define "other things". As long as it is headers, the best solution would > > be to ask the xscreensaver maintainer whether he could make a -dev > > package with the headers that you can build-depend on. > > > > Simon > > steve@gashuffer:~/temp/cosmos-1.0/debian/patches$ ls -R > .: > config.h hacks utils > > ./hacks: > screenhack.h screenhack.o > > ./utils: > colors.h grabscreen.h hsv.o resources.o usleep.o visual.o yarandom.h > colors.o hsv.h resources.h usleep.h visual.h xshm.h yarandom.o > > It's not just headers, sadly. That's why it needs a _compiled_ source > tree to work with. I certainly don't mind including it in Debian (I > would need a sponsor, as I'm not yet a developer), but I was a little > hesitant with no upstream, especially as we are about to (someday, any > day now) switch default compiler versions. My C++ is just not good > enough to be depended on to fix source bugs or deprecated constructions. > I will write upstream again (I tried once and got no answer, but who > knows (^: ). If they are pingable, or I find someone who doesn't mind > helping me sort out source bugs, I think it would be a nice little hack > to include for xscreensaver.
OK, minor updates on this. Upstream wrote back, saying he is no longer doing active development work with linux, but would be happy to help if there are problems witht the program. That makes me reconsider putting it into Debian. On to the problem, now (there's always something, isn't there?). When I was originally building the program, I was just doing some basic testing to make sure it built cleanly in a pbuilder chroot, not yet modifying the original tarball name or anything. Today I changed the original source name (cosmos-1.0.tar.gz to cosmos_1.0.orig.tar.gz) so that dpkg-source would know to build the usual .dsc and .diff.gz, and it failed, because there are binaries in the .diff - they are just not copied over, and so build fails. If I don't change the source tarball name, it builds a 'Debian native' package - cosmos_1.0-1.tar.gz, no .diff, but doesn't complain. This seems like a bug to me - I can see the reasons for not including binaries in the source (incompatible $ARCHs, compilers, etc) but it seems like dpkg-source shouldn't be allowing it for Debian-native packages either, am I right? Of course, all of this means that I have to figure out some other way to get those compiled binaries into debian/patches if I want to keep it cross-compilable. grrr. grumble. TIA, Steve -- BOFH excuse #440: Cache miss - please take better aim next time
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