Manually add depends to independent *.deb
 

Basically, I found a piece of software as an rpm say, hello.rpm, and converted it to hello.deb using alien. I know what the dependencies are and manually installed them using aptitude, then installed the *.deb with dpkg -i hello.deb.

Anyway, next I created a local apt repository containing hello.deb and the dependencies for my lan. That all works fine.

What I want to do now is make it so that I can just aptitude install hello.deb and it will install all the dependencies as well. I realize that I probably have to manually create the file with the dependencies. After doing some googling, I think what I need to do is create a meta pacakge using equivs to specify the dependencies.

Does that sound like the right way to skin this cat? The hello.deb program is just a simple test program right now. The idea is that I don't want to have to use deporphan or keep a list of what dependencies I installed separately just for this one program I converted using alien.

The reason for this exercise is to eventually use this method for setting up something more complex, like Compiz/XGL following this guide, which requires the use of alien.

Granted, I know the right way to do it is probably to learn how to build a proper debian package from source. But that seemed like a big leap for me at this point with something as large as compiz/xgl. I was thinking more along the lines of baby stepping...

I've read a bit on building .deb packages recently, and from what I can remember you have the possibility to add a file to the package containing the names of dependent packages. Apt will then treat these as dependencies and ask to install them. Not sure if you can manually add this to a converted package though. You might be tempted to study the TLPD page on building Debian packages here Offcourse Debian has their own page as well.