Hi, (sorry for the overlong subject).
I originally sent this to debian-doc but I got no answers, so I thought I'd post it here too. I'm interested in writing the "How Software Producers can distribute their products directly in .deb format" manual, as listed on http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals. I thought to write the following, more or less: - First, consider the license of your product. If it's DFSG-Compatible and of general interest, consider adding it to debian/main. That'd be the best solution because of all the things like the BTS and the worldwide mirrors. Or, if you don't want to do it yourself, ask for a packager on the mailing lists. - If it's not DFSG-Compatible, but of general interest and you'd want it into debian, consider adding it to debian/non-free. Or even better changing the license. - Otherwise, read the New Maintainer's Guide / Debian Policy and all the other relevant docs. Make a package using the normal debian tools, check it with lintian, try it, whatever. There are a few "special" issues, though. Unstable and testing are changing all the time; a closed-source package which isn't updated too often would probably quite soon get uninstallable because of some unsatisfied dependencies or break somehow. Thus, build your package for stable, but do not use strictly versioned dependencies (i.e., require an exact version), but only >= dependencies. So there's chance that it'll be installable/run also on testing and unstable. - Consider putting fast-changing libraries/programs into your package instead of depending on the ones shipped with debian. They could be installed into /usr/lib/<package-name>/. - If you've got only few and/or seldom updated programs, shipping the .debs will probably do. If you've got many and/or often updated programs, or just want to be cool, consider setting up your own package repository. This is the basic idea for packages which can be adapted to the FHS in a reasonable way; but for some really large, closed-source and older programs that might be too difficult; it would probably be much easier to put them into their "own" directory, with their own bin, lib, and whatever other folders they need. I know that isn't the "proper" way to do it, but I'd prefer some program to be installed in this impure way than overwriting some other files or sprinkling the file system with mysterious configuration and cache files. Or maybe it'd be better to create directories such as /usr/bin/<package-name>/, /usr/lib/<package-name> and so on. I'm not too sure about this, though. Any ideas? Anything wrong with this? Improvements? Comments? Criticism? Thanks. -- Aaron Isotton http://www.isotton.com/ My GPG Public Key: http://www.isotton.com/gpg-public-key
