Repackaging a Debian package for use with Breezy

[Stefan Potyra]

Hi Andrew,

Am Montag 20 Februar 2006 18:49 schrieb Andrew Conkling:
> Hello,
>
> I am new to Ubuntu (for the second time :), having gone around the
> block a time or two and having spent a lot of time with Arch Linux)
> and this time around I am looking to get into packaging a bit more.
> My first goal is to get my own Python program (and its dependencies)
> packaged for Breezy.  Fortunately, another guy has packaged it for
> Debian (http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/pygmy) so it would
> just be a matter of hacking the various packages to work with Ubuntu.

Since it is in debian, it already is in ubuntu dapper (I just checked). We 
cannot add this pacakge to breezy though, since breezy is already finalized.

>
> There's a veritable wealth of information out there regarding Debian
> packaging.  From the Debian maintainers' guide, I get the impression
> that all I would have to change is the control file for the package.
> However, I'm not sure if anything else would need to be changed, nor
> am I sure how to go about getting to the control file from the
> package.  The pbuilder howto explains how to get a source package from
> an Ubuntu repository, but this package isn't in an Ubuntu repository,
> unfortunately.  Would I add a Debian repository to my pbuilder's apt
> list, or would there be a better way?

If you intent to do packaging work for ubuntu, you should always build your 
packages to the development version (i.e. dapper) and have your pbuilder use 
dapper sources.

>
> (I was surprised to find that the Ubuntu wiki didn't have a salient
> howto for modifying an existing Debian package for Ubuntu, but I'd
> certainly be willing to write one once I get this ball rolling.)
>
> Could anyone help with that, and provide any pointers for other things
> that I would need to check?  I've set up a pbuilder chroot just fine,
> but the howto is lean on explaining how to use it to build packages
> and I couldn't find another page that laid out the process for
> building and testing in pbuilder and then installing on Breezy.

There are quite some pages in the ubuntu wiki (probably distributed over 
several pages) which contain good information or point to good resources, 
some located under MOTU/Packages... 

I guess the best place if you have questions is to come to #ubuntu-motu on 
irc.freenode.org, where we can directly answer your questions.

Cheers,
	Stefan aka sistpoty.