Re: external packager

[Florent Monnier <fmonnier@linux-nantes.fr.eu.org>]

> > I am a very new packager for Mandriva, and discovered that one can
> > package for Mandriva even if he's not a Mandriva user because there are
> > test machines on which we can log on through ssh to do the tests and
> > submit the package.
> >
> > So my question is
> > is it possible too to become a Debian packager without using Debian ?
>
> On your own machine, you can "install" a Debian in a directory using
> debootstrap (everything is well documented in the Debian installation
> manual), and then chroot inside it and use Debian tools for packaging,
> testing your packages, etc. But of course, you should be familiar with
> Debian tools. Debootstrap is a script with very few dependencies, you
> should be able to execute it on any distro.

First I have only a small hard drive, how many space would I need for this ?

Second the idea (when I saw it was possible for mandriva) is that the author 
of a software should be able to provide packages for all the main Linux 
distros (not only 1 or 2), and it would be nice if this could be made easy.