On 16-May-2001 Mabe, David, M (Dave) wrote:
> Debian-Mentors:
>
> I am working on packaging Misterhouse (http://www.misterhouse.net), a home
> automation program written entirely in perl. This program has no makefile
> for installing, you just unzip, untar and go.
>
> Question 1: Will I have to change the install routine to use 'make' even
> though it is not really needed, or can I somehow have dpkg just copy the
> text files to the appropriate directories?
>
debian/rules is a makefile. No need to add another.
> Also, this program makes use of several shared scripts that are eval'ed by
> the misterhouse engine when the program is run. Users of the program write
> their own and usually store these in a private directory and use some that
> come with the distribution. These can be thought of as "config files," but
> I doubt they should go under /etc.
>
scripts do not really belong in /etc if it can be helped.
> Question 2: Where should the user-defined scripts go so they will survive
> upgrades and where should the scripts that come with the distribution go?
>
perhaps /usr/local/{lib,share}/misterhouse. local is specifically meant for
this type of thing. Many of the interpreters have a /usr/local/lib/interpreter
for local modules.
> There is a name conflict as the main program runs a perl script called 'mh'
> and this conflicts with mail handler.
>
> Question 3: Is 'misterhouse' too long of a name? Will the mh file need to
> be renamed or just the package?
>
I would go with misterhouse for the perl script and the package name.
