Re: Using alien to create a .deb

[Gilles]

Hi.

> 
> I've been experimenting with the alien package to install Lilypond on my
> Debian unstable box. 

That seemed like a good idea.

> Being somewhat old fashioned I prefer to install my
> software via dpkg/apt rather than the autopackage route!
> 

I've read the arguments (from their web site) for using "autopackage";
and I'm not convinced either.

Moreover, I've tried to install the lilypond autopackage; and it fails
on my system (amd64) for unkonwn reasons. The error message tends to
blame the packager...  And the packager doesn't seem to care.

And why would he?  This is the role of the maintainer to ensure that the
software installs and works correctly on the distribution for which he
packages it.
Contrary to autopackage's claims, my experience shows that the distribution
maintainer is still necessary because the LilyPond team better spends its
time on things other than packaging problems...

[In the meantime, I continue to use LilyPond 2.4.5]

> I downloaded the RPM from the website, ran alien over it, and installed
> the resulting .deb file. Everything seems to work okay, and I've
> compiled a few scores with no significant issues.
> 

I've just tried "alien".  And it failed:
  dpkg-gencontrol: error: current build architecture amd64 does not appear in 
package's list (i386)
  dh_gencontrol: command returned error code 65280
  make: *** [binary-arch] Error 1

[Again, this seems to point to an architecture problem... Is music engraving
different for 32 or 64 bits? ;-).]

Note that the source code (from the tarball) compiled fine (notwithstanding
hundreds of warnings from the "/usr/bin/gf2pbm" command and some other from
the "Makefile").

> I have two questions:
> 
> 1) Does anyone with any knowledge of the internals of Lilypond deb and
> RPM packages have any idea where alien might introduce any subtle problems?
> 

(See above.)
Did you try and test the resulting package with "lintian"?


Best regards,
Gilles