Automatic src.tgz -> deb tool?

[Tommy Trussell]

On 2/1/07, David Symons <ubuntu at liberatedcomputing.net> wrote:
> On 2/2/07, John McCabe-Dansted <gmatht at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi, is there a tool to automatically convert a standard libtool based
> > source tarball into a deb file?
>
> checkinstall could be (at least part of) what you're looking for:
>
>     CheckInstall keeps track of all the files created or
>     modified by your installation script ("make install"
>     "make install_modules", "setup", etc), builds a
>     standard binary package and installs it in your
>     system giving you the ability to uninstall it with your
>     distribution's standard package management utilities.

Based on my (limited) understanding, the reason checkinstall isn't a
"complete" solution is because "good" deb packages are "smarter" than
that -- they also include information about dependencies, for example.
So if something in your deb is incompatible with something else that
might be installed OR if its installation required you to install
another package, both of those should be noted in the deb so it can
make the right things happen when someone installs it.

There are other characteristics of a good package, such as having the
man pages and/or help (as applicable). I'm sure there's a web page
(Debian or Ubuntu) that spells this out but I can't recall right now.

A lot of this could be automated in a packaging tool as a checklist...