Compiling and packaging a new version of a library

[thomas.hood]

Hello packaging gurus,



Firstly just to say I've ploughed through the following, so I'm not
being lazy :-)

https://help.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/packagingguide/C/index.html

http://tinyurl.com/lez6v

http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/



I'm somewhat wiser, but pretty confused. What I want to do is
relatively simple but I'm unsure of how to proceed. I need to build
some .debs of a selection of libraries (libjack, jackd, libraw1394,
libiec61883, libavc1394) that are already in the dapper binary
repositories, but from the latest SVN versions.



The libraries work fine by apt-get install'ing the binary repository
versions and then compiling the SVN sources and installing over the top
like so:



$ autoreconf -f -i -s

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr

$ make

$ sudo make install



I do this so that apt knows these programs are installed for other apps
that depend on them.



Obviously making debs would be a far more sensible approach, not least
because there seems to be some odd naming convention stuff going on.
(i.e. all the libjack stuff gets called libjack0.100.0-0.so etc,
whereas installing from source just calls the files libjack.so etc.)



The sensible approach would appear to be to copy the method that the
package maintainers used when building these libraries and just use the
SVN source and update the version numbers in the control file. BUT... I
can't figure out how to do this as there don't seem to be any source
packages for the aforementioned libraries, and I'm unlikely to come up
with a correct (matching) set of build rules etc. on my own...



If someone has gone to the trouble of creating binary debs, why don't
the put the source packages up? As I understand it, you have to create
the source packages first anyhow... ](*,)



Am I missing something really obvious here? 



Thanks,



Tom



P.S. Specifically I need 'Freebob'
(http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main_Page) which is a
Firewire soundcard driver library which utilises the Jack audio
connection kit.



P.P.S. I know quite a few people are interested in having a set of
ubuntu debs (which I'm happy to host) for this, so you'd be helping the
multitude :-)


-- 
thomas.hood