User:Mohammad7410/Packaging
Packaging is the simplest, yet not exactly clearly documented well part of software development. This tutorial should hopefully cover everything you need to start making simple, working packages for Maemo.
This tutorial assumes you're running on Linux (or a virtual machine of one) and that you have Scratchbox installed as per http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Maemo5_Final_Installation
Qt Creator users
A project made with QtCreator usually creates two (or more) folders, one contains a clean source, and the other contains an architecture specific build, for the purpose of this tutorial, we will not be using Qt Creator's package builder (as imo, it's crap compared to the manual one).
Copy the files in the clean source directory to somewhere in your scratchbox $home directory (or just copy the whole folder into ~ on scratchbox) and follow the steps below.
Scratchbox users
Packaging an application involves two things, getting the source itself, and making the debian/ directory and writing its contents. The debian/ directory is needed to make .deb packages, everything related to the package (i.e. .deb file) is there, with the sources outside it, the sources and the debian/ directory should be in one main directory, which is the source directory for the package.
Example hierarchy (Package name is maemodeb):
maemodeb/ (main source dir, a version number can be appended (e.g maemodeb-0.1) src/ (usually contains sources, sources can also be put in the main dir without a subfolder) data/ (usually contains data, i.e icons/images) debian/ (contains the files needed to build the package)
The debian directory should contain at least this basic set of files, without them, a package cannot be built: A control file, this holds information such as name of package(s - multiple packages can be built from one source), description, maintainer name, section, packages needed to build the source, and the dependencies, and (for Maemo), icons for the application manager and "pretty" names, also for the application manager. A changelog file, this holds again, the name of the source (not the separate packages), the version number, the changes in that version number, and a signature with the name and email for the person who edited the old source, as well as a timestamp, this file can be auto-generated with dch. A compat file, which contains the version of debhelper needed, only a number is held in this file, usually 5. A rules file, which contains the build instructions.