Hi Guys! I've put my packages back together without debmake helper scripts, and I feel much more confidant now that I know what is going on. A big help was Igor Grobman's unfinished work, the "Debian Programmers Manual"
http://www.pics.com/~igor/debian/programmer.html/index.html which contained this execution tree: dpkg-buildpackage dpkg-parsechangelog rules clean dpkg-source rules build rules binary dpkg-shlibdeps dpkg-gencontrol dpkg-deb dpkg-genchanges [Igor, I swapped ``dpkg-source'' and ``rules clean'' and added ``rules build'' here.] Igor said that this was an old project that he never finished and that better things were being written now. I'm sure that I haven't managed to track down all the new-maintainer documentation out there, but Igor's document contained a lot of useful information I had not seen elsewhere (such as this execution tree) that seemed to fill the niche between the "Debian Packaging Manual" and the several packaging tutorials which lean toward debmake/debstd. Manoj's sample rules files helped a lot too. I like their style, and I borrowed a lot from them. He offered to email them to those who wanted wished. To help cut down on his email load, I would be happy to forward them to anyone who asks. The uuencoded file is about 230k. Here a just a couple of more questions. 1. For the elisp-manual package (this is the info version of the 700 page 2 volume manual available from FSF) I changed Section/Priority from editors/extra to doc/optional. (This is appropriate isn't it?) This shows up in the *.changes file (both on the md5sum lines and as a changelog entry ) -- is that all I need to do? The package was removed from hamm a couple of weeks ago (since it was in old source format) so I don't think that I need do anything else to get it out of its old section. 2. The elisp-manual package is funny in that the upstream package comes with pre-built info and dvi files in addition to the Texinfo source. (The README does not mention this, but it is not just a fluke of this version as previous versions also did this.) What is weird about version 2.4.2 is that the pre-built info files (but not the dvi file) is build from a different version of the source -- version 2.4b. The difference between versions 2.4b and 2.4.2 is slight, consisting of the rewording of a dozen and a half sentences. (The pre-built info files were also build with a much older version of makeinfo, which also changes their format.) Anyhow, to avoid messing with the pre-built info files, I built the ones for the Debian package in a subdirectory debian/build-info. Is that cool? (It works, I'm just wondering how appropriate it is.) 3. I originally planned to ask someone to review my packages before I uploaded them, but I do feel much more confidant now. I have uploaded them to my home directory on master: /debian/home/kirk -rw-r--r-- 1 kirk Debian 2948 elisp-manual_19-2.4.2-1.diff.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 kirk Debian 648 elisp-manual_19-2.4.2-1.dsc -rw-r--r-- 1 kirk Debian 555204 elisp-manual_19-2.4.2-1_all.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 kirk Debian 1201 elisp-manual_19-2.4.2-1_i386.changes -rw-r--r-- 1 kirk Debian 1937099 elisp-manual_19-2.4.2.orig.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 kirk Debian 2277 emacs-lisp-intro_1.05-1.diff.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 kirk Debian 651 emacs-lisp-intro_1.05-1.dsc -rw-r--r-- 1 kirk Debian 195668 emacs-lisp-intro_1.05-1_all.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 kirk Debian 1146 emacs-lisp-intro_1.05-1_i386.changes -rw-r--r-- 1 kirk Debian 190408 emacs-lisp-intro_1.05.orig.tar.gz Although I don't feel the need for someone to check them out anymore, I would certainly still appreciate it if some chose to take the time to do so. 4. I'll move them over to Incoming late this evening if nothing bad turns up before then. I know that new upload policy is being discussed (and I did use the ``Closes: Bug#'' syntax), but my understanding is that I still need to close the bugs and mail the .changes file to debian-devel-changes myself. I assume that I should do the latter as soon as I move them to Incoming and the former after they have been installed in the hamm tree. Right? Thanks again to the help. I have heard this expressed before, and it was certainly true for me; the packaging process seems rather confusing at first, but it is actually quite easy once you figure things out. (Yeah, yeah, I know that these were two really simple packages -- no executables, only info files -- but now I am ready for more something more complicated.) Kirk Hilliard
