Building source and binary .deb from .dsc, .orig.tar.gz, and .debian.tar.gz files

27 August 2010 - Filed under tips & tricks

This post is more a note to myself since I don’t have to search again it when I’ll need to do this.  I’m guessing that it may be helpful to others too.

Here is how to create both .deb packages (source and binary) from the .dsc, .orig.tar.gz, and .debian.tar.gz files.

1. Create a directory to work from
   • mkdir newpackage && cd newpackage
2. Download the .dsc, .orig.tar.gz, and .debian.tar.gz files for the software you needed.
3. Create the source directory
   • dpkg-source -x <packagename_version>.dsc
4. Get into the package source directory
   • cd <packagename-version>
5. Build both source and binary .deb
   • dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
6. Verify the binary package’s content
   • dpkg –contents ../<packagename_version_platform>.deb

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-08-27  ::  Laurent Parenteau

Questions/Answers : Digest 0×0004

24 August 2010 - Filed under tips & tricks

This week, I’ve only found three questions and answers particularly interesting :

1. Has the use of C to implement other languages constrained their designs?
2. Is there a Linux distribution with a pure HTML interface?
3. Problems with manually creating an ELF file.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-08-24  ::  Laurent Parenteau

Subversion Clients Review : Cascade

18 August 2010 - Filed under reviews

I have not forgotten the Subversion Clients Review series.  This time, I’ll take a look at Cascade from Conifer Systems.

Cascade in not a simple subversion client.  The main part of it is the Cascade File System (CFS), which is used to interact with a either a Perforce, Subversion, or Alienbrain repository.  On top of that, there’s the Cascade Proxy which create an easy and effective way for remotely accessing the repository.  Then, there’s the Cascade Manager that does automated builds and tests when changes are committed to the repository.

While this suite of tools is very interesting and seems to offer great functionality rarely found in free tools (Cascade isn’t open source, but it’s free for personal use), I didn’t reach the point of trying it.  The reason is, you need to install it as root, which isn’t great for a subversion client.  I’m sure that it would be possible for them to make it so it allow an installation from a non root user.

But if you want to, checkout the manual, and get yourself an idea of Cascade.  It looks really interesting, if you are a business.  For personal use, the requirements and installation procedure are too cumbersome.  Get yourself an open source Subversion client instead.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-08-18  ::  Laurent Parenteau

GlusterFS

17 August 2010 - Filed under tips & tricks

If you don’t know about GlusterFS, read that article at linux-mag.com.  While it start by talking about FUSE, it’s followed by a great detailed description of GlusterFS.

For a brief overview of what GlusterFS is, from wikipedia :

GlusterFS is a general purpose distributed file system for scalable storage. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. GlusterFS is based on a stackable user space design without compromising performance. From the ground zero days it has found a variety of applications ranging from Cloud Computing, Biomedical Sciences to Archival Storage.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-08-17  ::  Laurent Parenteau