Hello all.
I am 2239 KM away from my Ubuntu machine, and there is no way to install any form of Ubuntu (dual-boot, chroot...) on the netbook I am using. I want to build a .deb package, but that's too damn hard on a windoze machine, so I figured I can package the .tar.gz file on it, then, hopefully find a way to turn it into a .deb file using my almighty N900, is there any way to do so?

-I hope there is, crosses fingers-

Please TMO users, give me the magical solution before I go to bed

I want to fill my eyes with joy from my new shiny foreseeable .deb file...so badly...

No member viewing this except me?!
[IN TEARS]...and I thought this is a helpful community...[/IN TEARS]

Joking. I guess it is up for tommorow then.

How 'bout using the Debian chroot (Easy Debian).

I tried installing devscripts at one point in Maemo, but I think that not all the dependencies were there. But this should work in the chroot.

Of course doing a proper .deb package requires more than just converting a tar.gz file...

slaapliedje

OMG, that's a looong way to go, it is too late to fiddle with easy-debian now.
BTW I have a backtrack live cd with me, anything can be done with it?

go to bed better

Try to install the alien package from the debian armel repositories:

alien - Convert or install an alien binary package

SYNOPSIS
alien [--to-deb] [--to-rpm] [--to-tgz] [--to-slp] [options] file [...]

DESCRIPTION
alien is a program that converts between Red Hat rpm, Debian deb, Stampede slp, Slackware
tgz, and Solaris pkg file formats. If you want to use a package from another linux
distribution than the one you have installed on your system, you can use alien to convert it
to your preferred package format and install it. It also supports LSB packages.

There's many issues with a tar.gz file. First of all you can say its a very rough equivalent to a zip file under windows.

There's no way to tell (unless you tell us) that the contents of the tar.gz does not contain any files that are generally source codes. By that I mean like anything that has filename extensions such as .c and .h for instance. With those extensions you cannot make N900 run them but you will need them to be compiled. For that to work you will need to install build environment on your N900 which will literally butcher your N900's rootfs if you're willing to do that without researching.

The other factor is that if the files within .tar.gz are precompiled binaries, you'll need to make sure that they actually do work with N900.. any old executable that you randomly find on internet does not equate to being able to run on N900. They need to be compiled as armel.

Now with all that being mentioned, easy chroot is probably an ideal method within N900, it'll be slow and sluggish but in the very least you can have all the compilation tools from scratchbox repository installed inside the chrooted environment which won't butcher your N900's rootfs and definitely would not leave a mess.

As with backtrack CD/DVD.. No it will not work, you will still need to download and install scratchbox environment which is necessary for cross-compiling. Remember your N900 is not equipped with a regular desktop/laptop CPU, it is roughly the same processor as every other handheld devices. The codebase therefore is different from both, making your N900's CPU understand x86's code is like getting you to interpret other languages that you don't know of without any form of assistance in a nutshell.

I have created debs in my N900, but those were mostly shell and python scripts packaged for easy install.
I dont remember it now, but let me check it.

EDIT:

Yeah, try this out:
After extracting the tar.gz.
See this page:http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=838485

Thanks bud, worked like a charm.