[nzlug] Modifying DEB packages

[Craig Box]

> How do I do this for Debian and Ubuntu? I did "apt-get source openssl"
> and ended up with unpacked pre-patched openssl source tree. I can
> indeed patch the source tree with my patch and "debuild" it. But this
> way noone else will be able to take the source from me and eventually
> disable the patch again. Actually the ../openssl-...diff.gz isn't
> even created at all, only the modified tree has been packed to
> openssl_0.9.8a-7build1.tar.gz     
> 
> Is there some other cleaner way than directly patching the tree? Best
> if it's something similar to RPM where each patch remains in its own
> .diff file, is distributed this way and could be enabled / disabled
> by anyone wanting to rebuilt the package.   

See http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ch-build.en.html#s-dpatch,
http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ap-pkg-eg.en.html#s-pkg-dpatch and
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/253.

Basically, the method is to drop your patch in the debian/patches directory,
update the list file in that directory, and make sure the 'rules' file has a
section for using dpatch.  OpenSSL on Dapper does not seem to come with any
patches included, but it is quite common in Debian packages.

Craig