Recommended way to install from source code and yet manageable by package system?

[akhran]

Suppose I download the source.tar. What is the recommended way to install from the source code and yet manageable by the aptitude package system?

One method I read of is to install (.configure, make, checkinstall) with the help of checkinstall package and then manually install the deb package created with dpkg.

Is there a better method?

Thanks !

[scottro]

With Debian you're usually best off building packages the Debian way.

Usually it will be something like (leave out the ones that you have already) if the package you wanted to build was called sourcepkg

apt-get build-dep sourcepkg
apt-get source sourcepkg
apt-get install fakeroot
apt-get install automake
apt-get install dpkg-dev

This will get you three packages, sourcepkg.tar.gz sourcepkg.dsc and sourcepkg diff.gz

Then

dpkg-source -x sourcepkg.dsc

That should create a directory, sourcepkg-<versionnumber>

cd into sourcepkg-<versionnumber>/src and do

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b

When it's done, you should have a .deb package

Then, dpkg -i soucepkg<versionnumber>.deb

This is making the assumption that there are Debian sources available, and that you asked this because you want to do some custom configuration of the program before installing.

Hopefully, that's the case here.

[spencerf]

just my 2 cents, but if you really want packages compiled from source I would use a source based distro like gentoo or sourcemage. These distros are designed specifically for installing source based packages and do not require any extra effort on your part.

[scottro]

Heh, we could start a whole flame war here, but in general, if you prefer to compile from source, I've found that Gentoo, as you mention, Slack and its derivatives, e.g. Vector, and Arch are often the best ones to use. I've installed some newcomer friendly distros, watched them install something like 600 packages, most of which I'd never use, then try to compile from source and get

make not found.

Of course, it's usually easily fixed, but as spencerf points out, other distros are more designed to allow you to compile from source. Deb and its derivatives, as well as RH and its offshoots, often, even if you install the necessary building tools, put some things in different places, so make will sometimes fail because it can't find something where it expects to find it.

[CanyonMan]

A good discussion on creating packages and preserving dependencies can be found in Hill, Harris & Vyas, "Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible", 2005, Chapter 26 titled "Building Packages."

[spencerf]

just to be clear I am not advocating any distro over any other one and am definetly not intending a flame war I was simply stating that some distros are designed for specific things, ie gentoo=source; ie (just so you know) arch=binary packages (pacman installs binaries yes you can use abs but it is basically an i686 pre-compiled binary distro making it fast and easy to install packages, but not from source).

i'm sure debian is great, just as every other distro is great in their own way, and one distro might be right for me, you, or whomever and not for a bunch of other people. I just though that if the initial poster wanted source based packages for whatever reason he might have a look at a source based distro.