Upstream to orig.tar.gz

[Wolfgang Baer]

Hi,

Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
> 
> You don't need to repack for that, just use the original tarball.
> dpkg-source will automatically extract into the right directory.
> 
> Only repack if you NEED to remove stuff from the tarball, do not repack
> in any other case than that.

Well, I know that I normally should not repack the upstream package.
But I don't understand what dpkg-source can help me with .zip or .jar
files. dh_make simply fails completely if you are not in a directory
with <packagename>-<version> and one level above a 
<packagename>-<version>.tar.gz exists.

I didn't find a step by step instruction how to get this orig.tar.gz
file - the only mentioned way is the dh_make - and this doesn't work.

Did you mean dpkg-source -b ? Like the following:

Extract the jar file -> get a directory named BeanShell
cd into it and make my debian directory with the control/changelog ...
cd ..

Extract the jar file once more into a temp directory -> temp/Beanshell

dpkg-source -b BeanShell temp/Beanshell

Then I get:

dpkg-source: warning: source directory `./BeanShell' is not 
<sourcepackage>-<upstreamversion> `bsh-2.0b2'
dpkg-source: warning: .orig directory name BeanShell is not 
<package>-<upstreamversion> (wanted bsh-2.0b2.orig)
dpkg-source: building bsh in bsh_2.0b2.orig.tar.gz
dpkg-source: building bsh in bsh_2.0b2-1.diff.gz
dpkg-source: building bsh in bsh_2.0b2-1.dsc

The orig.tar.gz contains the BeanShell directory. If I know do
dpkg-source -x bsh_2.0b2-1.dsc it extracts in a directory called
bsh-2.0b2

???

Well, I find the new maintainer guide or the developers reference
should contain examples how to do it - step by step.

> 
>>Now I have a package with the following upstream name:
>>
>>JRclient-RE817.tar.gz
>>
>>What to do with it ? In the debian-policy is said the
>>upstream version _should_ start with a digit. Is it therefore
>>OK to just use lower case letters and repackage to jrclient-re817
>>as top-level directory and rclient_re817.orig.tar.gz ?
> 
> 
> You'll need a Debian upstream version that's sane. I don't know the
> upstream numbering, what does RE mean here? I think you _must_ start
> with a digit, even, though I'm not sure.

A good question - there are to distributions for download one with an
older interface starting with RD and the new one starting with RE.

Thanks for your help,

Wolfgang