Backport dar

Versioning

Backporting dar is quite simple - you just need to recompile the Etch version in a Sarge environment. It's a nice occasion to cover the very basics.

You need to modify debian/changelog though. Enter the dar-2.3.0 directory, and type:

dch -i

If you want to use another editor, you can also:

EDITOR=emacs dch -i

Here's my final changelog entry:

dar (2.3.0-5~bpo.1) sarge-backports; urgency=low

  * Rebuild for Debian Backports <http://www.backports.org/>
    (new version adds support for extended attributes)

 -- Sylvain Beucler <beuc@beuc.net>  Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:37:59 +0200

What did I do?

• Changed version according to bpo convention, -debian_version~bpo.1, so:
  • the testing version was: 0.4-7
  • dch proposes by default -debian_version+1: 0.4-8
  • I use -debian_version~bpo.1: 0.4-7~bpo.1
• Changed distribution from unstable to sarge-backports
• Added a terse explanation
• Replaced root <root@sylvain> with a real e-mail address.

Then, in the dar-2.3.0 directory, start the compilation.

debuild -us -uc

Using the -sa debuild option: not necessary: by default, if the version ends with '0' or '1' (as 'bpo1' does), dpkg-buildpackage uses the existing source release (the .orig.tar.gz file must be present in the parent directory, though).

Dependency

When installing the new dar, we run into a dependency issue:

$ sudo dpkg -i dar_2.3.0-5~bpo.1_i386.deb
(Reading database ... 110892 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace dar 2.3.0-5~bpo.1 (using dar_2.3.0-5~bpo.1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement dar ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of dar:
 dar depends on libdar64-4; however:
  Package libdar64-4 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing dar (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 dar

This means we need to recompile libdar64 as well.