[Pkg-virtualbox-devel] Some comments about the build process

[Michael Meskes]

> The BUILD_PLATFORM_* and BUILD_TARGET_* variables can be detected from
> within debian/rules using dpkg-architecture(1) and a few make
> functions. I implemented this for my own 1.4.0 packages and it worked
> fine on both i386 and amd64.

If this simplifies things I'm all for it. But without seeing the
differences (keep in mind that I didn't do the initial packaging) it's
hard to judge for me. Maybe Patrick and/or Daniel could comment.

> Since several debhelper scripts are already used, we might as well use
> debhelper in the installation process -- dh_link(1), dh_install(1),
> dh_installdirs(1), even dh_movefiles(1).

This change makes a lot of sense to me.

> The official (non-free) VirtualBox packages put all the shared
> libraries into /usr/lib that the binaries are linked against, making
> mucking with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unnecessary. I recall trying to
> accomplish this for my packages, but I think I never got anywhere...

Frankly I'm not sure whether this is really a good idea. 

> Finally, I think I might have found a way to cross-compile Windows
> drivers on a Debian system. This would allow us to ship the .iso as
> part of the package, but I haven't worked out the details yet.

Would you mind telling us how?

> Looking forward to your comments.

I'm surprised no one else had an opinion so far, but then they all might
be busy as I was the last few days.

Michael
-- 
Michael Meskes
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