[Koha-devel] Debian Packaging

[MJ Ray]

Alex King <alex at king.net.nz> wrote:
> I think we should maintain our own repository.  I think it makes sense 
> to keep the Debian packaging stuff somewhere separate from the main code 
> and merge back whatever work makes sense to the main repository.  I've 
> always wanted to try out bzr and I've created my own bzr repository of 
> 2.2.5 (not published atm).

I have git, tla and cvs installed, but I'm happy to install bzr if 
needed.  I'm really -ve on svn and I failed to install darcs (its 
Haskell compiler seems to need a Haskell compiler installed).

I guess we just want to keep the debian/ directory in it and take the 
rest from CVS?

> Meanwhile, Geoff Crompton has submitted an 
> alioth project request.  What do people think?

I'm happy to use alioth if it doesn't limit us.  Of course, once the 
packages get into debian, we should use bugs.debian.org and 
packages.qa.debian.org as our first line.

> (Just to clarify, are you talking about modules external to koha that 
> need to be pulled from CPAN or are you talking about parts of koha which 
> could be modularised?  I guess you are talking about external 
> dependencies.

Yes, external deps.  I've only been installing koha on stable, so maybe 
they are all covered now.  Thanks to Geoff remembering that the tool's 
called dh-make-perl.

> And then the main task is to actually produce a package.  From my point 
> of view the main task is hacking on the install script to get it to 
> install the package to an arbitrary location (so it can be easily 
> packaged).

The install script already supports prefix, etcdir and auto-install,
so I doubt much hacking is required.  (I added prefix and etcdir some 
time ago and I think Paul added the auto-install hooks during 2.2.)

> If anyone wants to give this a go feel free.  Also making 
> sure we ultimately install to FHS compliant locations.  [...]

That reminds me: there is a draft debian-webapps policy out there 
at http://people.debian.org/~seanius/policy/ and one about DB apps at 
http://people.debian.org/~seanius/policy/dbapp-policy.html/

> I'll probably give it a go in the weekend if no-one else does before 
> then.  I'm showing my ignorance here, but two things would help me.  1. 
> pointer to a good resource on "learning perl in 24 hours" (I do C, 
> python, shell, awk etc, but never learned perl).

Perl's actually fairly good at coming with introductions, which is 
partly why it's so popular.  Try starting with:
  man perlintro
  man perlmod
  man perlboot
  man DBI
which will probably get you 95% of koha.  Unfortunately, it's not always 
clear to me when koha is just using modules and when it's being OO.

> 2. A very quick high 
> level overview of what the install script actually does (or a pointer to 
> documentaion).

The body of the installer script is mostly function calls to Install.pm, 
so it should be fairly clear.  Let me know if you want a run-through on 
IRC some time.

Thanks for taking a lead on this.  I think I'll be back online properly 
next week, telco permitting.

Best wishes,
-- 
MJ Ray - see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Somerset, England. Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
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