I did mostly give up on doing deb packages correctly, and I'll just rely on `checkinstall`. RPMs however are pretty easy with rpmbuild. I made a "makerpm" script which will work with a slightly modified spec file allowing it to pull from a git source - so makerpm plus a spec file (with revisions as noted in `makeprm help`) are functionally homologous to makepkg and a PKGBUILD.
]]>[1]: https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm
[2]: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ … de=id.i224
If you decide to try it, Trilby, please let me know what you have found. I'll probably experiment it a day.
]]>[1] the software itself is FOSS, but it will need to be reliable to compete with proprietary tools with general users.
]]>For tests with .deb packages, I would use something like docker or a chroot. You don't need a full distro like crunchbang just to test the package.
]]>Allegedly it can also create rpm packages, but I'm not going to worry about trying that out for a while.
A simple example of a script to allow debian/*buntu users to install one of my packages can be seen here. There is an executable script called `makedeb` - guess what it does. There is also a package-specific file called DEBBUILD - guess what that's for . With just those two files, a debian user could run the script which would get the needed info from the DEBUILD to install the needed dependencies, download and build the source, install under the watch of checkinstall to a temp directory, have checkinstall build a .deb package, remove the builddeps (and optionally all deps installed during the build), and leave them with a *.deb file ready for dpkg.
This instance of makedeb was intentionally made generic so it could work for other packages, however it is also *very* simple and so will not work for all other packages. A DEBBUILD is nearly identical to a PKGBUILD, except the dependency names need to be converted to the debian deps (and there may be many more deps needed as you cannot assume our base/base-devel components are there ... and split -dev packages suck).
Making this DEBBUILD + makedeb made me wonder how hard it would be to convert our own makepkg over to work on top of apt-get/dpkg. I've installed debian (crunchbang) on one of my systems to experiment with this. I've realized there may not be much to it really. I've just completed my revision to the actual makepkg script (and makepkg.conf) to make a full featured makedeb and makedeb.conf. It is not yet tested - and once I test it I may find it is not nearly as complete as I had hoped. But the goal is to allow PKGBUILD -> DEBBUILD conversions to be quite easy (just change the deps).
I may post my full featured makedeb in "community contributions" if/when it passes a few basic tests. It will not run on arch, but it is suited for archers who need to make debs. It may eventually run on arch (there are dpkg is in the AUR, and so is checkinstall, though it is very broken ATM), but this is not a goal of mine.
]]>NixOS:
Void Linux
Actually these two distros are quite similar to Arch on some aspects.
But Trilby, have you ever looked into openSUSE Build Service? It is a way to build packages for several distributions at once (see its documentation to see what distros / package managers are supported). Never tried myself, but I used openSUSE before, it looks like quite a reliable service.
]]>Thanks for all the input - that should get me going in the right direction. The .dsc package does seem to be what I was looking for with debian/*buntoo (I think). Though that man page looks like it was written by a team of lawers.
Well, it is an Ubuntu man page. (-; I'm sure you can find better references if you look; that was the just the first one I came across. It has a link to some samples, and if you set up Debian in a VM and simply "apt-get source" something you will have a package you can look at.
Or here is the source package for wm2: http://bpaste.net/show/166127/
]]>Slackware does seem pretty straightforward. Though like Gentoo, I supsect any interested slackware users wouldn't need much handholding. Not that I wouldn't want those package scripts eventually - most potential users who would be completely clueless on their own will likely be ubuntoo users (this is no insult to ubuntoo - quite the opposite as it is simple enough for anyone to use for the basics).
]]>If you'd like to make a package available for CRUX, it should be very simple: http://crux.nu/Main/Handbook3-0#ntoc21. I think ideally you would make a complete port and make it available in a shared collection: http://crux.nu/Main/Handbook3-0#ntoc31
]]>Edit: good luck on your journey. I guarantee it will make you appreciate the simplicity of Arch PKGBUILDS.
]]>