AutoDeb

Revision 6 as of 2005-11-14 20:52:24

Clear message

Autodeb is a CURRENTLY VERY EXPERIMENTAL script to completely automate compiling and installing software.

The basic concept is that the user downloads any autoconf .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 archive (i.e. most programs), and types

  • autodeb archive.tar.gz

(though, actually, you must currently unpack the archive manually, and then run autodeb directory).

The program will be configured, compiled and installed, and a binary .deb package will be created and installed on the system.

Autodeb tries to automatically find and install dependencies (both those needed for compiling, and those needed at runtime), and it lists runtime dependencies as such in the created .deb.

It uses (a modified version of) auto-apt to find development dependencies during 'configure', and checkinstall to create a .deb binary package.

Contrary to standard auto-apt, autodeb does not just install every file that 'configure' happens to peek at. Instead, it lets 'configure' run and fail, at which point it installs only the last package that 'configure' required, and repeats the process.

Slower, but avoids installing a lot of useless "false" dependencies (auto-apt always tries to install G77 on my system, just to mention one).

Autodeb can be downloaded at http://ljl.150m.com/autodeb.sh , but PLEASE BE AWARE THAT IT IS EXTREMELY EXPERIMENTAL SOFTWARE THAT USES ROOT PRIVILEDGES AND MIGHT DAMAGE YOUR SYSTEM.

Known problems and bugs

  • The generated .deb package does not have any dependencies listed.
  • Add your problems here (or contact me directly at ljlbox@tiscali.it if you can't edit this page)...