[ILUG] debian & source complilation

[Rick Moen]

Quoting John P. Looney (valen at tuatha.org):

> There is an apt repository of gnome2 i386 binaries and sources.
> However, I'm on debian-sparc, so the binaries aren't that useful. Is
> there a simple way of scripting getting down, compiling and installing
> gnome2 from source ?

I really like Stephane's suggestion of Jeff Waugh's Garnome:
http://gnome.org/~jdub/garnome/  It's just too cool not to use, even
though it operates outside the Debian package framework.

However, one recently released build tool _within_ the regular package
framework is Joey Hess's apt-src.  Copying from my
http://linuxmafia.com/debian/tips file:


The apt-src package is a much cleaner, newer, and more comprehensive
alternative to dpkg-buildpackage, "for downloading, installing,
upgrading, and tracking Debian source packages".  The manpage gives
some good examples of usage:

      To install the source to pine to /usr/src, build it, and install the
       resulting debs:

         apt-src install --location=/usr/src -i pine

       To track changes to said installed pine source package, and install
       debs whenever a new version comes out:

         apt-src install -i pine

       To install a local copy of package foo, which you are going to apply a
       local patch to:

         apt-src install foo
         cd foo-version
         patch <~/my-foo-patch
         apt-src build --installdebs foo

       To upgrade your local copy of foo, bringing your patch forward, and
       building and installing new debs:

         apt-src install -i foo

       To import the source tree in /usr/src/linux, which you unpacked from a
       ftp.kernel.org tarball (or from the kernel-source package) into
       apt-src, so it knows about it:

         apt-src import kernel --location=/usr/src/linux --version=2.4.18

       [...]

Quoting author Joey Hess:

"'apt-src install' source gives you a source-version tree in the [current
directory].  Modify to suit, and 'apt-src build' source. If a new version
comes along, 'apt-src upgrade' source to upgrade the tree, patching your
local changes forward.  Pass in --installdebs to any of these commands
to make it build and install a .deb."



Another snippet you might find useful:

The pentium-builder package will let you set system-wide options so that
all compiles from source will be optimised for your CPU architecture.
(Despite the name, it can optimise for Athlon, etc.)