[Build-common-hackers] Improving documentation

[Marc Haber]

Hi,

I would like to offer help for cdbs documentation. However, I can't
deliver docs right now since I don't understand cdbs at all at the
moment. I can use cdbs to build a package, but as soon as I need to
deviate from the "normal" path, I am lost.

What I'd like to offer is to try to understand your answers to some of
my questions, and to re-word them (adding necessary background
information) for inclusion in an FAQ document which could then
probably evolve into a fully fledged manual once I have improved my
understanding of cdbs.

For starters, I have the following questions, and I would appreciate
if one of you would take the time to answer.

-----------
(1)
Can I use the cdbs patch system for conditional patches? For example,
if I have a dpatch patch beginning with

if [ -e /usr/include/linux/atmbr2684.h ]; then exit 0; fi

can I emulate this with cdbs? If not, does cdbs have an interface to
call dpatch?
-----------
(2)
Does cdbs always build all packages mentioned in debian/control? For
example, exim4 has a binary package exim4-daemon-custom mentioned in
debian/control that should not normally be built. The entry in
debian/control is infrastructure for a custom package that a local
administrator can choose to build from our sources.

Judging from your code, DEB_ARCH_PACKAGES could be used to do so, but
setting that variable to the appropriate list of package names seems
to be ignored by the patch system.
-----------
(3)
Another package suffers from a sick upstream file layout, and so I'd
need to invoke make in ./foo/src instead of in . what cdbs seems to
do. I now could throw a ./Makefile into my package which in turns
invokes make in ./foo/src, but that kind of negates the positive
effects cdbs could have.

How am I supposed to handle this with cdbs?
-----------

Any hints will be appreciated, and may end up in better cdbs
documentation.

Greetings
Marc

-- 
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Marc Haber         | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header
Karlsruhe, Germany |  lose things."    Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 721 966 32 15
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