Comments on: Howto: Build software updates in Ubuntu

By: A little cheese, for your whine « Motho ke motho ka botho

A little cheese, for your whine « Motho ke motho ka botho — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:43:08 +0000

[...] benevolence to keep them up-to-date. Perhaps some people feel they lack the skills to do that, but they certainly don’t lack the tools. And really, considering you can download a precompiled Linux binary, uncompress and use it, the [...]

By: That chortling noise « Motho ke motho ka botho

That chortling noise « Motho ke motho ka botho — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 01:51:40 +0000

[...] software and needs to delay the release to pick up new versions of my favorites. Solution: Build your own favorites and update your system, or better yet build your own pure Gnome system and avoid using the Ubuntu [...]

By: Rebuilding Dillo 0.8.6-i18n-misc « Motho ke motho ka botho

Rebuilding Dillo 0.8.6-i18n-misc « Motho ke motho ka botho — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:41:02 +0000

[...] which sounds counterintuitive, it’s very easy. Along the lines of the method for building software updates, here’s how to do [...]

By: johnraff

johnraff — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:10:13 +0000

(This is a second attempt to post – are posts with URLs in them blocked? Anyway…)
I forgot to mention dependencies.

Checkinstall, at least the version I have, doesn’t let you enter anything in the “10 – Rquires [ ]” option, and when the deb’s installed APT doesn’t see the package as having any dependencies, so any libraries or other programs you installed as dependencies of that package will appear to be orphans and if you run any kind of auto-clean, with deborphan for example, they’ll be removed, breaking your package. You can use Synaptic, Aptitude etc to remove the “automatically installed” tag on them and keep them safe, but now if you ever uninstall the package the dependencies won’t be automatically removed.

Just something to keep in mind…

————————————-
Scouring the web I found some Debian and Launchpad threads suggesting this inability to set dependencies was a Checkinstall bug which might have been fixed in version 1.6.1-8 (or even 1.6.1.7 in the Intrepid repository) but my last attempt to post failed so in case the urls were the cause here is the end of one:
bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/checkinstall/+bug/258727
please put https colon slash slash on the front…

Intrepid’s 1.6.1-7 brings in a new dependency on dpkg-dev which suggests it might be getting a bit deeper into the debian system.

By: johnraff

johnraff — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 05:22:46 +0000

I forgot to mention dependencies.
If you go with the default settings the deb file that Checkinstall makes will have no record of dependencies, so if you update an application that was in the repositories from the source code, any dependencies that were brought in for the original app will now look like orphans. If you then do some kind of auto-clean, with eg deborphan, your new version of the app will be broken.

You can use Synaptic (or command-line methods) to remove the “automatically installed” marking of those dependencies so they’ll be safe, but now if you ever uninstall the application you updated the dependencies won’t be automatically removed.

Just something to be aware of…

————————————–
btw this failure to allow entry of dependencies in option “[]10 – requires” may be a Checkinstall bug that gets fixed in the newest version.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=469639
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/checkinstall/+bug/258727
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/checkinstall/+bug/212971
It’s just conceivable that the version in the Intrepid repositories fixes this:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/checkinstall

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:12:30 +0000

Thanks, those are both good tips. I’d seen the tutorial thread about proper Debian packaging a long time ago, but for something I was only making for my own use, I always found checkinstall to be quicker and easier.

By: johnraff

johnraff — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:45:23 +0000

For beginners (like me) one option is to edit checkinstall’s config file /etc/checkinstallrc so as to make the deb only, not install it.
The line’s at the end:

# Install the package or just create it?
INSTALL=0

Then you can run checkinstall without sudo, the deb file will belong to you, not root, so you can delete or move it easily, and you’ll only need sudo when you finally install the software.

This way you can look at checkinstall’s output while it’s making the deb, and if there’s anything weird going on you needn’t install the deb, and your system’s untouched.

By: Aren Olson

Aren Olson — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:13:57 +0000

Checkinstall is actually kinda a dirty hack. while it works fine for many cases, it’s not completely compliant and can in fact mess up apt in some circumstances.It is MUCH better to actually generate the full debian packaging. If you’re just grabbing a new version of something in the repos already, this is often as simple as getting the old deb source, copying the debian folder into the new source, updating the changelog and running dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot. There is an excellent guide to making debian-standard packages on the ubuntu forums here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=51003