[Neurodebian-devel] Debian packages for Stimfit

[Christoph Schmidt-Hieber]

Dear Yaroslav,

thanks for your input. I won't be able to start working on this before this or maybe even next weekend - there's quite a lot to do.

Moving the discussion to neurodebian-devel is a good idea. That way we would spare Jose's mailbox as well.

Let me know if you want access to the hg repository.

Best,
Christoph

On Tue, 25 Jan 2011, Yaroslav Halchenko wrote:

> btw -- would you mind if we move (may be I could also bounce) discussion
> to neurodebian-devel (or neurodebian-upstream) mailing list?  you do not
> have to subscribe if you do not want -- I will authorize you to post
> without subscription.
>
> info on mailing lists: http://neuro.debian.net/#contacts
>
> it is just that all the information might come handy for someone else as
> well...
>
> ?
>
> no pressure
>
> On Tue, 25 Jan 2011, Yaroslav Halchenko wrote:
>
>
>> On Tue, 25 Jan 2011, Christoph Schmidt-Hieber wrote:
>>> I've looked into libfann2 and some more packages, but either missed the point or they're doing it differently:
>
>>> In the case of stimfit and python-stfio, the binaries are generated using different configure flags; i.e. to build stimfit, you do:
>
>>> ./configure --enable-python
>>> make
>>> sudo make install
>
>>> whereas to build python-stfio, you do (in a separate build - none of the *.o files can be re-used):
>
>>> ./configure --enable-module
>>> make
>>> sudo make install
>
>>> How would I go about this in the debian/rules and
>>> debian/*.install files? Do you know of any package that uses a similar
>>> build process that I could use as a template?
>> it is hard to choose any particular one ;-)  and to have multiple calls
>> to configure and then make -- nothing comes in mind (I know those who
>> call cmake multiple times for different kinds of builds, e.g.:
>> http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-exppsy/afni.git;a=blob;hb=HEAD;f=debian/rules
>> but there it is also 'out of source' building
>
>>> Or should I try to tweak
>>> my build toolchain so that both packages are generated during the same
>>> build?
>
>> Well -- it is ok actually if I got you right, a
>
>> you could simply override install target of debian/rules and
>> just call
>
>> configure --enable-python
>> make
>> make install DESTDIR=debian/stimfit (or whatever that package name would be)
>
>> configure --enable-module
>> make
>> make install DESTDIR=debian/python-stfio
>
>> actually since stfio is an extension (not pure python) -- you better
>> enable it building for all supported versions of Python (not just
>> default).  For that, I guess, you would need to loop through them... I
>> guess similar to
>
>> http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-exppsy/brian.git;a=blob;hb=HEAD;f=debian/rules
>
>> there it is a bit obfuscated since I wanted also to
>> * build sphinx documentation
>> * unittest against every supported python version
>> * move arch-dep extensions (.so) into their own package
>
>> but it should give you the idea ;-)
>> just do not get confused -- it uses 'debhelper 7' features, so you will
>> not see much of dh_* calls in there, only the "override_"s where things
>> need to be changed from the default behavior
>
>> Sidenote:
>
>> you are using HG -- branching/merging should be easy, why not to keep
>> 'debian/' directory as is in a 'debian' branch... then you could,
>> whenever release ready simply merge your 'tip' into it, adjust and build
>> from it... also it should make things easier while working on packaging.
>> Such setup is very common in Debian world and you could even benefit
>> from helper tools such as
>
>> mercurial-buildpackage
>
>> disclaimer: I am not HG user myself, GIT, so I use git-buildpackage and
>> svn-buildpackage before (when I used SVN primarily); but I guess
>> mercurial-buildpackage should be similar in functionality
>