Please don't use the 'ddeb' extension; make it plain old 'deb' instead.

[Karl Hegbloom]

I was creating a package of some software we need, and have 'pkg-create-dbgsym' installed since it's such a convenient way to make packages of the debugging symbols. I really like it. The problem is, however, that the standard toolset does not recognize the '.ddeb' extension. I am using 'mini-dinstall' to create an http 'apt-get' archive for the packages, and it refuses to install the '.ddeb' files. Additionally, 'dpkg-buildpackage' does not notice them. There are probably other tools in the standard toolkit that do not (yet?) recognize the new file extension, and/or do not know about the extra packages not listed in "debian/control".

As a work-around, I've put lines like the following into "debian/rules", AFTER the include statements for the 'cdbs' .mk libraries:

  binary-fixup/wfdb-tools ::
   mv ../wfdb-tools-dbgsym_$(PKG_VERSION)_$(DEB_BUILD_ARCH).ddeb ../wfdb-tools-dbgsym_$(PKG_VERSION)_$(DEB_BUILD_ARCH).deb
   dpkg-distaddfile wfdb-tools-dbgsym_$(PKG_VERSION)_$(DEB_BUILD_ARCH).deb science extra

As you can see, all it does is rename the newly created package to have the more-standard '.deb' extension, and then calls on 'dpkg-distaddfile' to place an entry into "debian/files" so that it will be listed in the '.changes' so that 'mini-dinstall' can find it.

Perhaps instead of section "science", the "-dbgsym" packages should be in a new section of their own? I've decided that they belong in the same section as the package they go with, and that if I don't want to see the "-dbgsym" packages in 'aptitude', I can simply filter them out of the display.

I believe that if you make this change, it will be a lot easier to get the "-dbgsym" packages into the main archive... YMMV... see what the others think. Perhaps the rationale is that they are not "complete" packages in the usual sense since they contain no "/usr/share/doc/PKG". I don't think that matters since they already have "-dbgsym" in the package name and that's an easy match expression, matching only "-dbgsym" packages AND 'pkg-create-dbgsym' itself, which should probably be renamed, or better, simply folded into 'debhelper' proper.

Please?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

The reason why we named them .ddeb was to *avoid* getting them into the main archive. It would make mirrors explode, as well as doubling the size of Packages.gz.

The long-term goal is to get them into a separate archive (such as dbgsym.ubuntu.com).

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

dpkg gets along with it just well, apt-get does not mind either, apt-ftparchive can use .ddeb if you specify "Packages::Extensions, and we want to keep them separate from the main archive, so I close this as "won't fix" for now. Thank you!