Making packages

[Michael S. Fischer]

Hi folks,

I'm now working for a hardware startup in Fremont in "stealth mode",
whose software is placed atop a Red Hat distribution, after being
packaged in a custom format (which handles dependencies and multi-node
installations).

I know the Debian package format will give us the former (dependency
management) but not the latter (multi-node installations) but I'm
convinced that basing our systems atop a Debian distribution (Potato
with some add-ons) is a better idea than continuing along the path
that's been taken so far with Red Hat.

The problem is that our source tree (user-mode utils, etc) is not
organized in a debmake-friendly manner, and I don't think I'm going to
win a battle to reorganize the source tree to fit traditional free
software standards.

Presently our custom software packaging system is similar to .deb's
(metadata, files, pre/post-install scripts) but the packages are built
by simply collecting a bunch of files that have been generated in various
places throughout the source tree.  The traditional method of building
Debian packages doesn't seem to fit the same paradigm.

I'd like to solicit suggestions as to manual pages, documents, examples,
etc. I should read so that I can understand how to build Debian packages
in a similar fashion.  Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

-- 
Michael S. Fischer / michael at dynamine.net / +1 650-533-4684
Lead Hacketeer, Dynamine Consulting, Silicon Valley, CA