Backport dar

Backporting par2 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 par2cmdline-0.4 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:

par2cmdline (0.4-7bpo1) sarge-backports; urgency=low

  * Rebuilt for Sarge (new version fixes a crash in silent -qq mode)

 -- Sylvain Beucler <beuc@beuc.net>  Fri, 23 Jun 2006 13:30:34 +0000

What did I do?

• Changed version according to bpo convention, (debian version - 1)bpo1, so 0.4-8 -> 0.4.7bpo1
• Changed distributino from unstable to sarge-backports
• Added a terse explanation
• Replaced root <root@sylvain> with a real e-mail address.

Then, in the par2cmdline-0.4 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).