[vox-tech] Debian Package Tools

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Sun 09 Jan 05, 10:44 PM, Richard Harke <rharke at earthlink.net> said:
> I have downloaded a source package and I'm trying to get it set
> up to look at. I used apt-get source package-name
> Now I have a directory with a diff.gz, a .dsc and a orig.tar.gz
> There is also a sub-directory with 3 .bz2 files, a shell script
> called prep.sh and a version file. Also a sub-directory called
> debian. At this point everything is very old, June 2003.
> Clearly patches have not been applied.
> 
> Isn't there a debian tool for extracting the entire source archive
> into its usual tree and applying the patches? I've tried
> dpkg-source -x name.dsc but what I described is what I get.
> Running prep.sh does unpack a couple of the bz2 files but does
> not apply the patches.
> 
> Along with wanting to look at this source, I am trying to
> learn to use the debian tools better.
> 
> Thanks
> Richard Harke

Hi Richard,

If your goal is to build the package  (as opposed to creating the package),
IIRC, it's the -b option for apt-get, so:

   apt-get -b source wine

would download the wine source package, apply all the patches, and install.
Note that the patches will be in the debian subdirectory.  If you don't see
it, it won't being applied.

Which makes me curious.  You said the source looks old.  That's not going to
change.  If that's the case, you're going to build something from old source
code.  Patches are used in Debian source only because:

   1. They may be third party patches not applied in the original source.
      This is the case for yadex.  :)

   2. The source may not be free to distribute in modified form.  This is
      the case with pine.

Pete

-- 
The mathematics of physics has become ever more abstract, rather than more
complicated.  The mind of God appears to be abstract but not complicated.
He also appears to like group theory.  --  Tony Zee's "Fearful Symmetry"

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