Re: Metapackaging

From	Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.user
Subject	Re: Metapackaging
Date	2024-08-21 13:50 +0200
Message-ID	<JdS0F-6ydm-1@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References	(1 earlier) <JcQDD-5Ukh-1@gated-at.bofh.it> <JcR6F-5UtW-7@gated-at.bofh.it> <JdvdL-6jSb-1@gated-at.bofh.it> <JdwCR-6kAB-1@gated-at.bofh.it> <JdReh-6xH6-3@gated-at.bofh.it>
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On Wed, Aug 21, 2024 at 11:57:06 +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Tue Aug 20, 2024 at 1:55 PM BST, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > You're saying that you use equivs to create packages that have the SAME
> > NAMES as Debian packages??
> 
> That's entirely the point of it, surely. You want to convince the
> packaging system that you have dependency $FOO satisfied, even if you
> don't. You create an "equivalent" metapackage.

The only way I've used equivs is to produce a package named mta-local
which looks like this:

hobbit:~$ dpkg -s mta-local
Package: mta-local
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: misc
Installed-Size: 9
Maintainer: Equivs Dummy Package Generator <greg@hobbit.wooledge.org>
Architecture: all
Multi-Arch: foreign
Version: 1.0
Provides: mail-transport-agent
Conflicts: mail-transport-agent
Description: A local MTA package
 A package, which can be used to establish a locally installed
 mail transport agent.

It provides mail-transport-agent, so programs like bsd-mailx have their
dependencies satisfied.

I run a locally compiled qmail installation, not from the Debian packages,
if such packages even still exist.

The idea that I would do this but name it something like "sendmail"
instead of "mta-local" sounds extremely sketchy.

As I said previously, I know some other people use equivs to generate
a package of their own making that contains a bunch of Depends lines,
to bring in all of the software they want during a new installation.
In that case, it would also not make sense for their locally built
package to share a name with any Debian package.

Thread

Metapackaging Dmitrii Odintcov <cyprussocialite@gmail.com> - 2024-08-15 23:40 +0200
  Re: Metapackaging "Jonathan Dowland" <jmtd@debian.org> - 2024-08-18 18:10 +0200
    Re: Metapackaging Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-08-18 18:40 +0200
      Re: Metapackaging "Jonathan Dowland" <jmtd@debian.org> - 2024-08-20 13:30 +0200
        Re: Metapackaging Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-08-20 15:00 +0200
          Re: Metapackaging "Jonathan Dowland" <jmtd@debian.org> - 2024-08-21 13:00 +0200
            Re: Metapackaging Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-08-21 13:50 +0200
              Re: Metapackaging "Jonathan Dowland" <jmtd@debian.org> - 2024-08-21 17:40 +0200

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