[Nut-upsdev] New automake targets and Debian packages

[Charles Lepple]

I was trying to merge the Debian unstable packaging files with the NUT
trunk, and I noticed a bit of a problem with the automake changes.

For the uninitiated, the 'debian/rules' file is essentially a Makefile
that is used to build the package and split things into the
sub-packages. If you look at line 85 of this copy of the rules file:

http://boxster.ghz.cc/projects/nut/browser/trunk/packaging/debian/rules#L85

you will notice that the old "install-*" targets are used to
distribute the files between the packages.

Basically, whatever is in debian/nut-usb after running through "rules"
will end up in the nut-usb-<version> package, etc. That means we coud
potentially use the new unified "install" target, and move files out
of debian/nut into debian/nut-{usb,snmp,dev,cgi} afterwards.

However, if we do that, we are ignoring the information in Makefile.am
about which subsystem a given file belongs to. If I read things
correctly, the "--with-XYZ" options still need programs to be grouped
so that they can be enabled or disabled at config time. The problem is
that we would like to configure just once, build just once (so we do
not need all the old "build-*" targets) and install multiple times
with different $DESTDIR settings.

Peter: how hard would it be to bring back the install-* targets? If
you're busy, I can crack open my Automake book and look at this, but
I'm sure there was a reason for doing it the way you did, even if it
was just to simplify the conversion. I was a little confused at some
of the variable names, but that's probably because I was trying to
compare it with the old build system.

Arnaud: do you have a suggestion for how we could handle this better?
Again, I don't want to have too much information repeated in the
packaging directory, since things can easily get out of sync later on.
Also, what is the "RUNUID" stuff for? Won't that get ignored if I use
"fakeroot" to build the debs? Don't worry, I won't commit any changes
to debian/ in the top-level directory; it'll go in packaging/debian
like before.

-- 
- Charles Lepple