Packaging Questions, New Debian Package, Packagers Guide

[Scott Ritchie]

On Tue, 2004-11-23 at 13:25 +0200, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> Scott Ritchie wrote:
> 
> >However, I'm not sure if this means the wine binary package should
> >depend on them, since it's compiled in.  So, should I make libicu28 a
> >dependancy for wine?
> >  
> >
> ICU is compiled statically. There is no runtime dependency on libicu. It 
> is an exception, however.
> 
> The general rule should be that the optional packages are build-dep, but 
> only "suggested" or "Recommended" (I've never really managed to 
> understand the difference between them) for the compiled result.
> 
>           Shachar
> 

Recommended packages are also installed by default, suggested are not.

I decided to trudge through include/config.h and check to see which
things aren't getting defined and then install the appropriate libraries
(as well as put them in the build dependencies).  It seems to be as
simple as finding a comment like /* Define if you have the <gif_lib.h>
header file. */, noting that it's commented out, and then searching for
packages containing gif_lib.h on Debian's website, then adding them.  In
this case, there are two choices, giflib3g-dev and libungif4-dev.
Investigating, it appears that giflib3g-dev is superior, since
libungif4-dev was written to avoid the unisys patent, but both should
work.  I put a build-depend on either of those packages in the control
file, and am off to the races.

On another note, is there a reason why giflib3g-dev isn't replacing
libungif4-dev?  I thought their patent expired, so giflib3g-dev can be
free now.  


Either way, I think I got all the packages wine can use that are
available on Debian.  I'll post my Include/configure.h file so someone
can look through it and see if I'm missing something after it builds.

-Scott Ritchie