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Revision 1 as of 2008-05-17 23:03:13
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Editor: SimonRichter
Comment: Some initial ideas
Revision 2 as of 2008-05-17 23:18:21
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Editor: SimonRichter
Comment: add note about unit tests
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(please add unit tests even for functionality you believe is trivial so we can see if a patch breaks something)

This page is aimed at developers whose software is packaged for Debian. It attempts to document what we do to your software, what we do for you and what we require from you.

Getting Packaged

(the initial version of a package)

Pristine Upstream Source

(why we'd like to have a single .tar.gz archive from you, at least for the time being)

Hardcoded Paths

(our config files are in /etc and our manual pages in /usr/share/man. Other people use /usr/local/etc and /usr/local/man. Please make configurable without patching)

Your Build System

General Considerations

Out-of-Tree Builds

(if your software can be built in different ways, we need to build all of them in different directories)

Cleaning the Tree

(if out-of-tree works, we can rm -rf the build tree, otherwise we need clean targets that remove anything that can be automatically rebuilt, including generated source)

Installation

(allow installing into a specific dir that is not the same as the directory the software was configured for)

(create directories on the fly)

Autoconf and Automake

(we like it, but keep it fresh :-) )

Make

(we sort of like it)

(others that build programs)

Java

Perl

(we like stuff from CPAN, why?) (plugins => see above)

Python

(they have a standard way of packaging too) (plugins => see above)

(other languages with their own deployment tools)

Getting Branched

(why we maintain ancient versions in stable) (what to do if you think we shouldn't do this)

Getting Upgraded

(converting old system wide data) (converting old user data)

Getting Patched

(we need your help in understanding your package) (please add unit tests even for functionality you believe is trivial so we can see if a patch breaks something)

Getting Ported

(viewing autobuilder logs) (uint32_t and htonl)