Re: diffs for .debs

[Sarel Botha <sjb dundee lia net>]

On Fri, Jun 11, 1999 at 08:37:28PM +0200, Paul Seelig wrote:
> There are no source .deb's like Redhat does with their .rpm's.  Debian
> distributes pristine sources in .tar.gz (but renamed to .orig.tar.gz)
> and a separate .diff.gz containing Debian specific patches for the
> packaging related stuff and fixes.  There is a third file with an .dsc
> ending which contains md5sum and size of both the tar ball and the
> diff file, which is used by dpkg-source to unpack and patch the
> pristine sources.  This is IMHO a far cleaner approach to distributing
> sources than the rpm way.

the orig.tar.gz is the original tarball of the program, the diff is just the
difference that was made to the original before compiling. So to create a
.deb, just download the original sources from a site or .orig, apply the diff
and run build.

> 
> > (hmm, I already did this
> > one time ... think there's a directory somewhere on the debian ftp containing
> > both tarballs and patches).
> >
> There is a source directory tree ordered the same way like the binary
> trees (i386/sparc/alpha/powerpc/hurd) at every Debian FTP site or
> mirror.
>                                    Cheers, P. *8^)

yea, i thought the gnome packages were only on ftp.gnome.org mirrors, didn't
know they were on debian mirrors as well :)

Thanks

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