Subject: new documentation on how to develop Debian packages available

From: [email-masked] (Bruce Perens)
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 96 19:02 PDT

There is some new documentation that I think is essential for all
prospective Debian developers to read. It's in the dpkg_1.3.6 package,
which you can find in the project/experimental directory on our FTP
archives. Since this is unreleased developmental software, you might
not want to install it (or you might want to make sure your backups are
up to date, and keep them that way). However, it's worth unpacking the
package without installing it just to get the documentation. It's in
HTML form, under /usr/doc/dpkg in the package. Included are a new "Dpkg
Developer's Manual" and "Debian Policy Manual", both by Ian Jackson.

	Thanks

	Bruce

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From: Guy Maor <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 10:46:36 -0500 (CDT)

On Wed, 21 Aug 1996, Bruce Perens wrote:

> prospective Debian developers to read.

The documentation is also available at:
http://chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk/~ian/policy.html/
http://chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk/~ian/programmer.html/

Note the trailing `/'s.

Guy

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From: Rick Macdonald <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 10:22:26 -0600

> Since this is unreleased developmental software, you might
> not want to install it. 

> However, it's worth unpacking the
> package without installing it just to get the documentation. 

For emacs users, my deb-view feature is just what you need to look at
doc files in a .deb file without installing _or_ unpacking the archive!

The file is about 12KB.

http://www.cuug.ab.ca:8001/~macdonal/deb-view.el

If you can't get at it, I can email it to you.

-- 
...RickM...

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From: Shaya Potter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 17:19:42 -0400 (EDT)

Is there a postscript version of the documents.

Thanks,

Shaya
--
Shaya Potter
[email-masked]

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From: Guy Maor <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 16:49:36 -0500 (CDT)

On Thu, 22 Aug 1996, Shaya Potter wrote:

> Is there a postscript version of the documents

Yes, in the directory ftp://chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk/users/ian/dpkg-doc/
you'll find various versions of the files, including postscript.

Once again, these are *DRAFT* documents which do *NOT* reflect current
policies.  Although major changes are unlikely, they are certainly
possible.

If you are a prospective developer, please also get the latest hello
and dpkg packages from /debian/project/experimental to play with.  The
same caveats apply; you should *NOT* upload any packages using the new
source format.

Guy

---

From: "Susan G. Kleinmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 22:15:25 -0400

> same caveats apply; you should *NOT* upload any packages using the new

In an effort to save some time and possibly some trees, note that:

The new documents are provided in the most recent versions of dpkg
(>=1.3.3).  They are in /usr/doc/dpkg as HTML files.
If you get the source for dpkg version 1.3.3, you will find the SGML
source files from which these HTML files were generated using
the new debiandoc script developed by Ian Jackson.  (Thanks, Ian!).  
In order to translate those files into Postscript, you need to install 
debiandoc-sgml, linuxdoc-sgml, sp, and sgmlspm.  Then you can convert 
the SGML source files into postscript using the command 
     debiandoc2ps programmer.sgml 
     debiandoc2ps policy.sgml 
Then, if you live on the West side of the Atlantic, you probably
then will want to run the command
     psresize -Pa4 -pletter programmer.ps > programmer.ps.letter
and then you want to print programmer.ps.letter.

Assuming not everyone wants to go through all this, it might help some 
folks to put the Postscript files (in both A4 and letter size formats) 
on the WWW site.  These documents have been so badly needed for so long
that it seems that it would be a really Good Thing to do whatever
can be done to promulgate them (IMHO).

Regards,
Susan Kleinmann

---

From: Ed Donovan <[email-masked]>
Date: 23 Aug 1996 01:38:00 -0400

> http://www.cuug.ab.ca:8001/~macdonal/deb-view.el

Ditto.  Some of these dpkg docs are html; if you have w3, when you
deb-view one of these docs you can 'w3-preview-this buffer' to display
it right.  It can't follow the links (hmm...that'd have to be pretty
abstract) so view each file separately, if that's comfy for you.  

(Unsolicited deb-view ramble: I find it particularly valuable, since I
used to 'dpkg -x' deb-files all the time to check stuff out, and often I
was root.  Cleaning up from that, I'd always 'rm -r usr/' in the
unpacking workspace, and then gasp, realizing I'd been one character
away from the apocalypse :-)

Thanks again, Rick.

-- 

Ed Donovan			[email-masked]

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From: Rick Macdonald <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 09:14:54 -0600 (MDT)

> abstract) so view each file separately, if that's comfy for you.  

I realized this last night, and added support for W3 into deb-view. I'm
going to add INFO support as well, then I'll announce the update. I
guess neither mode will be able to follow links, but it's still
very useful.

...RickM...