(17:47:01) blahdeblah: Hi, i'm looking for some best practices suggestions. Can anyone point me to documentation/tools relating to:
(17:47:01) blahdeblah: 1. maintaining packages in CVS and generating .debs from them
(17:47:01) blahdeblah: 2. maintaining apt repositories with the results from 1
(17:47:01) blahdeblah: I've found apt-ftparchive in the apt-utils package - is this the recommended tool for 2?
(17:47:19) Overfiend: blahdeblah: apt-get install cvs-buildpackage
(18:20:05) blahdeblah: Overfiend: thanks for that cvs-buildpackage suggestion - looks good. Is apt-ftparchive the right thing to be looking at for apt repository maintenance?
(18:21:25) Overfiend: blahdeblah: there are a few possibilities, that is one. You might prefer mini-dinstall.
(18:21:39) Overfiend: I understand that it is simpler to deal with than apt-ftparchive, which is a professional-grade tool.
(18:21:48) Overfiend: (meaning it is not documented sufficiently)
(18:22:10) Overfiend: "only professionals who already know what they are doing should use this"
(18:25:01) Lo-lan-do: blahdeblah: The developer's reference and the new maintainer's guide have usually been enough for me.
(18:28:28) blahdeblah: Lo-lan-do: the developer's reference and new maintainer's guide are pretty good, but i still feel like they could have something like a 5 page overview that gave an explanation about the tools and how they fit together.
(18:38:23) blahdeblah: Overfiend/whoever: Another question: what is the benefit of mini-dinstall over dput? If i want my package to be accepted into Debian eventually, should i go for something more elaborate than mini-dinstall?
(18:39:04) _rene_: blahdeblah: mini-dinstall is for your own repos. nothing do to with upload or do
(18:39:08) mrvn_: blahdeblah: dput uploads a package, mini-dinstall creates your private package pool. How do they relate?
(18:39:17) Lo-lan-do: blahdeblah: dput is the tool to upload to an incoming dir, mini-dinstall is to turn that incoming dir into a package repository
(18:42:02) blahdeblah: Lo-lan-do: Thanks - that is the sort of meta-information i was talking about earlier. apt-cache show seems to indicate that it's some sort of competitor to dinstall, which according to apt-cache search is somehow part of dput (even though i can't find it in the dpkg -L output).
(18:53:05) blahdeblah: Lo-lan-do/mrvn_/whoever: why does 'apt-cache show mini-dinstall' refer to dinstall, and should i care as a wannabe DD?
(18:53:33) Lo-lan-do: blahdeblah: Dunno / don't bother. As a wannabe, mini-dinstall is quite enough.
(18:56:51) mrvn_: blahdeblah: dinstall is what drives (part of) the real debian archive. mini-dinstall imitates it in a much smaller way.
(18:58:12) mrvn_: blahdeblah: You should check out reprepro too if you are going to compare archive tools for your home archive.
(18:58:26) mrvn_: blahdeblah: reprepro == mirrorer project on alioth.
(18:59:16) blahdeblah: mrvn_: Thanks. I'm looking for something more than a home archive. I need it to be available on at least 3 sites that i administer.
(18:59:32) mrvn_: blahdeblah: how many packages?
(19:00:12) blahdeblah: mrvn_: probably in the order of 10, since Debian gives me so many by default compared with RH. :-) Previously, probably more like 30.
(19:01:03) mrvn_: blahdeblah: Then all of them would be fine. You can even handle them with dpkg-scanpackages or apt-ftparchive alone.
(19:01:36) mrvn_: blahdeblah: If you need to replicate the archive to multiple hosts I suggest using debmirror or reprepro for that.