Problem installing from deb file and ignoring dependencies

[Tom H]

On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 4:42 AM, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I am trying to install a package A (from a .deb file) that depends on
> package B, but B is not available for my platform so I have built B
> from source.  I cannot install A by using
> dpkg -i A.deb
> as it complains about the missing dependency.  I can install it by using
> dpkg -i --ignore-depends=B A.deb
> but this is not a good solution as the next time I install something
> it complains about the package being broken.
>
> I have got over the problem by unpacking A.deb, removing the
> dependency and repackaging but I feel this cannot be that unusual a
> requirement and there must be a better way.  As it stands I will have
> to repeat the exercise to install an upgrade to A.

I assume that when you say "install from source" you're using
"./configure; make; make install" and B's installed into
"/usr/local/".

I see two possibilities.

1) Build a deb rather than use the above method. I tried once to build
a deb of the latest grub, from upstream rather than debianized
sources, and failed miserably. I didn't try particularly hard to find
out why because I was under time pressure but it seemed more
complicated than building an rpm (probably because I'm quite used to
building the latter but who knows; preseed's more complicated than
kickstart).

2) Use "equivs-control B; equivs-build B; dpkg -i B" ("apt-get install
equivs") to build a dummy B package and install it so A's dependency's
satisfied.