[tahoe-dev] Getting Tahoe into Debian (was: Re: linking pycryptopp against system provided cryptopp)

[Brian Warner]

> Its true that using the "upstream" makefile to build Debian packages has
> problems, but I think you can leave that and just not use it for the
> "official" Debian packages, but use it for all of your other packaging
> needs (for example, providing latest build packages).

Ok. For both Tahoe and Foolscap, the debian/rules files that are contained
inside the source tree are not at the top level: they're in a
misc/sid/debian/rules file of some sort, and the first thing that the
Makefile does is 'ln -s misc/sid/debian ./'. So I think it's safe to leave it
there, and create a normal debian .diff.gz for the official packages (i.e.
they won't be 'native' debian packages).


> > I'll let Zooko address his packages (pycryptopp, zfec, and some other
> > utilities).. I know he's used stdeb to create installable packages, but I'm
> > not sure what the actual process is.
>
> I'm not so familiar with all the dependencies here, but lets pick one of
> these and step through the process to get it in shape for Debian?

Sounds good. The packages which we need to get into Debian:

 allmydata-tahoe, of course (not sure what a better name would be)
 python-foolscap (ITP filed by Stephan Peijnik, #499699, 21-Sep-2008)
 python-zfec (zooko's)
 python-pycryptopp (zooko's)

I can think of a few ways to make forward progress:

 create a debian .diff.gz for tahoe, use it to build debs against an upstream
 tarball, run the result through lintian (or linda or whatever that fancy
 tool is), iterate over any problems it discovers

 do the same for foolscap, help Stephan make progress on that ITP

 find out what Zooko wants to do on zfec and pycryptopp


How should I do the lintian stuff? Specifically, how do debian developers
manage the .diff.gz file? I've seen references to a number of version-control
tools that seem to import the upstream sources into a branch, store the
debianized version in a separate branch, and can then create the .diff.gz for
you, but everything I've seen is third-hand. Is there a guide or a tutorial
on doing this stuff? Should I send you a .diff.gz and have you maintain it in
a repository somewhere?


thanks,
 -Brian