Building a deb: encountering problems

[Botspot]

Debian Bullseye still uses an ancient version of yad: 0.40.0 I'm trying to build a debfile to take advantage of yad's newer features.

I'm using these commands:

sudo apt install libgspell-1-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev intltool
git clone https://github.com/v1cont/yad
cd yad
autoreconf -ivf
intltoolize
./configure
make
sudo checkinstall

Checkinstall encountered a weird problem:

*** Warning: The package version "10.90
10.90
10.90
10.90
10.90
10.90" is not a
*** Warning: debian policy compliant one. Please specify an alternate one

I think this was caused by running ./configure several times, though that really shouldn't happen. After manually typing in 10.90 myself, checkinstall proceeded to generate a valid deb file! Problem is, the new yad binary is installing to /usr/local/bin, rather than /usr/bin. Is there a way to change this?

[frostworx]

you can add parameters to ./configure one of them is --prefix=<dir> where you can configure - the prefix (usually the prefix is by default /usr/local/) so you have to use ./configure=/usr/.

I don't use debian, but I wish you good luck with updating yad for it!

(btw for creating new packages taking a peek into how other distributions create it - f.e. compile options, or additional apply patches - f.e. this arch linux pkgbuild could be interesting for you)

[theofficialgman]

@Botspot I was able to build and upload a deb of the latest release of yad to the pi-apps files repo. https://github.com/Pi-Apps-Coders/files/releases/download/large-files/yad_12.1-1_arm64.deb https://github.com/Pi-Apps-Coders/files/releases/download/large-files/yad_12.1-1_armhf.deb

the debs should work on debian stretch and newer and ubuntu bionic and newer

I think my armhf deb is targeting armv7l... I'll have to see if there is a simple way for me to target armv6 instead (since I know some users use the pi1-2 and the GUI should at least still launch for them)

I built the official debian way (basically this except you need to clone this source from here, download the .dsc file from debian and move it into the yad directory, as well as update the debian/changelog to match the current version https://www.linuxfordevices.com/tutorials/debian/build-packages-from-source )

I also emailed the yad maintainer at debian today to see if they will update it (its been years since they had any activity and they only maintain yad and one other package)

[theofficialgman]

My email to the maintainer bounced. The email is dead. Looks like yad needs a new maintainer at debian.

[theofficialgman]

fyi, I re-uploaded the deb under the same name. the maintainer appeats to have made a type with the version in the NEWS files (21.1 when then meant to write 12.1). since pi-apps does check this file, it is important that the version be correct

edit: I have removed the debs due to many many bugs in yad 0.41.0+ that make it unuseable for pi-apps