[Kolab-devel] Announcing some blog posts for building packages for Debian on OBS

[Mateusz Kijowski]

Hi,


2013/10/28 Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk>


> I was wondering which project we should be targeting. I see there are "3.1"
> and "Development" projects, and when I tried to build the "Development"
> packages myself there seemed to be some kind of fundamental (non-packaging-
> related) build issue, whereas the "3.1" packages didn't exhibit the same
> problems.
>
> If we're fine-tuning the packaging is it best to target "3.1" in order to
> not
> have to deal with two different variables at the same time, or should it be
> safe to target the "Development" stuff? Also, where do the "Updates" come
> into
> this?
>

I am also confused by this. Which project should people willing to help
with Debian packaging should work with? I am under impression that
following a moving target (which I understand Kolab:Development project is)
is flawed. I think that we should focus on getting 3.1 packages to shape
and then port necessary changes to the development project.

I also have trouble to actually understand how Debian packages are being
built here. Let's take the pykolab package:

pykolab$ ls -al
razem 392
drwxr-xr-x 3 matik matik   4096 paź 29 13:57 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 matik matik   4096 paź 29 13:57 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 matik matik  10467 paź 29 13:57 debian.changelog
-rw-r--r-- 1 matik matik   3370 paź 29 13:57 debian.control
-rw-r--r-- 1 matik matik    640 paź 29 13:57 debian.rules
-rw-r--r-- 1 matik matik   7094 paź 29 13:57 debian.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x 2 matik matik   4096 paź 29 13:57 .osc
-rw-r--r-- 1 matik matik 333461 paź 29 13:57 pykolab-0.6.8.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 matik matik   1086 paź 29 13:57 pykolab.dsc
-rw-r--r-- 1 matik matik  14742 paź 29 13:57 pykolab.spec

I understand that debian.tar.gz is the debian directory from the source
package. This layout is quite different from what I am used to when working
with debian packaging so I have some questions regarding this file:

* Why is it a tar and not a proper directory?
* Why there are some files (debian.{changelog,control,rules}) separated
from the debian.tar.gz?
* What connection does it have to
git://git.kolab.org/git/pykolabreferenced by pykolab.dsc? (in fact
this URL seems to be broken)
* Does this have any connection to http://git.kolabsys.com/apt/pykolab/ git
repository?
* Is debian.tar.gz generated somehow? According to Timotheus' how-to [1]
one should untar it, make changes to the files inside, tar it again and
push for building. Are these changes kept in some kind of version control?


Also, some packages (e.g libkolab) seem to have patches inside them. I
guess that they are needed for RPM generation from *.spec files. Is that
true?

I am also wondering where the pykolab-0.6.8.tar.gz file is coming from. I
guess that some of these questions are related to inner workings of OBS. I
am willing to learn, but I have trouble to find relevant information. Could
you point me to some information on how this is all set up and/or how
building works in OBS? Some kind of build script might suffice, but I'm
unsure where to look for it.

Regards,


Mateusz.

[1]
http://kolab.org/blog/timotheus-pokorra/2013/10/24/howto-improve-debian-packages-using-obs
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