Repository – How to Create Stand Alone Packages from Ubuntu Repository

packagingrepository

Is it possible to create a stand alone deb packages by merging dependancies without manual repacking.??

I've looked at this question but it doesn't really answer what I'm trying to achieve above.

if possible how to do it?

update 1

No tools available yet(?)
So what about creating new deb package containing all packages which will copy dependencies to the cache and executing main package.
Is it possible?

update 2

Above method appears to be impossible because dpkg cant handle more than one operation at a time. Some scripts may can do it

update 3

this tool is very helpful but it currently wont support oneric and above
still waiting for more generic tool

Thanks in advance

Best Answer

Use super deb creator. You can make stand alone packages for upto Ubuntu 11.04. For more details check the official website. http://hacktolive.org/wiki/SuperDeb_Creator

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How many packages are in the main repository

You can run the following command line:

for f in /var/lib/apt/lists/*Packages; do 
  printf '%5d %s\n' $(grep '^Package: ' "$f" | wc -l) ${f##*/}
done | sort -n

that on my machine show the following output

27433 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_universe_binary-i386_Packages
 7768 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_main_binary-i386_Packages
 1944 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-updates_main_binary-i386_Packages
  664 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_multiverse_binary-i386_Packages
  632 security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-security_main_binary-i386_Packages
  605 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-updates_universe_binary-i386_Packages
  167 security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-security_universe_binary-i386_Packages
   67 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-backports_universe_binary-i386_Packages
   24 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-updates_multiverse_binary-i386_Packages
   21 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_restricted_binary-i386_Packages
   13 extras.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_main_binary-i386_Packages
   12 archive.canonical.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_partner_binary-i386_Packages
   11 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-backports_main_binary-i386_Packages
   10 security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-security_multiverse_binary-i386_Packages
    6 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-updates_restricted_binary-i386_Packages
    0 security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-security_restricted_binary-i386_Packages
    0 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-backports_restricted_binary-i386_Packages
    0 it.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric-backports_multiverse_binary-i386_Packages

Packaging – How and Why to Create -dbg, -dev, -doc Packages

Idea & Purpose

The main reason for separating out these different packages has to do with disk space and download speed. In particular, it is a big concern for mirror space since it means distributing multiple copies of the data. By making the foo-common, foo-data, or foo-doc packages Architecture: all, we only keep one copy of of the data in the archive instead of having it copied with each architecture (e.g. i386, amd64, ect...). Debugging symbols are not needed by most users and just end up making the package download take longer.

For packages in the official Ubuntu archives, there is actually no reason to create -dbg packages manually. The build machines automatically strip out the debugging symbols and put them into -dbgsym packages hosted on ddebs.ubuntu.com. (See: Debug Symbol Packages) -dbg packages that do exist are usually simply carried over from Debian.

Instructions

As for implementation, take a look at this question:

How to have Debian packaging generate two packages given an upstream source archive?

Briefly, new stanzas need to be created in debian/control for each package. Then debian/foo-*.install files need to be created as well. This will allow dh_install to put the right contents into the right packages.

The foo.install for the main binary package might look like:

usr/bin/
usr/lib/

foo-common.install, foo-data.install, foo-doc.install, or whatever:

/usr/share/doc/
/usr/share/icons/
/usr/share/foo/
/usr/share/locale/

And for foo-dev:

/usr/include/
/usr/lib/pkgconfig
/usr/lib/*.so

Creating the foo-dbg package requires editing debian/rules as normally dh_strip will strip out debugging symbols. So we need to override that behavior:

.PHONY: override_dh_strip
override_dh_strip:
        dh_strip --dbg-package=foo-dbg

Further reading: http://wiki.debian.org/DebugPackage