README

What is dh-make-[pear|pecl]?
----------------------------

If you know dh-make-perl you already know what dh-make-[pear|pecl] does.
Both programs create debian source packages from either an extension
from PECL or PEAR.
PECL and PEAR are repositories of extensions of the PHP Hypertext Processor.

dh-make-pecl currently requires a C extension downloaded from PECL.
There is currently no way to let dh-make-pecl download the extension
by itself. The program creates a directory
php-<extension-name>-<extension-version> containing all files
for the debian source package and the extensions files itself. Usually
it should be enough to create the debian binary package by
running dpkg-buildpackage in the created directory.

Building the pecl extension requires a debhelper called dh_pecl which
is also part of this distribution.

dh-make-pear does the same as dh-make-pecl for modules from PEAR.

This version of dh-make-php has several features disabled because they
are either not mature enough or need more discussion before making it
into a new version. As there are:

  - the source packages ships a debhelper script dh_pecl. It should
    rather be part of the debhelper package. dh_pecl inserts appropriate
    code into postinst and prerm of the pecl package to register
    the new extension in the various php.ini files. The job of dh_pecl
    is currently done by supplying templates already containing the code.
  - apache isn't restarted after modifying /etc/php4/apache2/php.ini.
    The regular php4 extension don't do that either.
  - creating a changelog from the extension's package.xml file (this is
    currently supported by pear.mk, but not yet by pecl)

Author: Uwe Steinmann <steinm@debian.org>
Contributions:
  Matthew Palmer <mpalmer@debian.org> (dh_pecl and helpers)
  Charles Fry <debian@frogcircus.org> (allow to use unmodified .orig.tar.gz,
    many valueable hints on how to improve dh-make-php)
  Matt Barry «muramas@cyberdiscordia.org> (patch to create php4 and php5
    binary package from the same source.)