HOWTO: Make Packages With CheckInstall

My original thought about this topic was that it didn’t really fall under the umbrella of ‘new’ user information, but then I slapped myself. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve admonished people about assuming that new GNU/Linux Users are new computer users. In fact, anecdotal evidence suggests to me that many new GNU/Linux Users are like me – experienced Windows or Mac powerusers who have grown tired of the ways of those OSes and want some freedom.

Many new GNU/Linux Users are developers and this post might be of interest, so here it is.

I recently blogged about an application called CheckInstall after a reader pointed it out to me. CheckInstall is meant to be used when installing applications from source and provides a previously unavailable means to remove those applications. That’s a pretty impressive accomplishment, but at first glance I thought that was the extent of its capabilities.

I had the opportunity to play with CheckInstall a little more last night in preparation for an upcoming GNU/Linux User Show and I learned a little more about it.

It turns out that CheckInstall actually creates distro specific packages and then installs them using the appropriate package management system. When building my package, I was able to specify what documentation files I wanted to include in my package and after the install was complete, the package was left behind for me.

So, not only can us end-users use CheckInstall to make our package management easier, developers can use it to create Debian, Red Hat, and Slackware packages for distribution. Very cool application.

CheckInstall Homepage