arla Debian package

[Mikael Vidstedt]

> > since the arla package in Debian is currently in an unusable state, I
> > considered doing my own. I have some questions for this:
> 
> We have talked to some lokal (debian)people to take it over, but it never
> have happened.

It has been a rather lengthy process, since I wasn't a debian developer
and had to get through the New Maintainer Process(tm). Now that I'm
finally half way through the process, I've realized that my experience
with building debian packages is not that big, and I'm really awaiting
some help from other people right now.

The main problem is not to create the binary packages (arla & xfs.o) (some
minor changes are made to the arla source). The problem is building the
arla source package and making the xfs-module compile with whatever kernel
is installed. This is an area where my lack of skill is total, since I
seldom use the kernel-source packages in debian at all.

Apart from this, there are some points where arla will not comply with
debian standards (Gregory Stark has listed some of them in one of the
files in the old arla package (eg. the "fs" command is a two-letter
command)).

I am, however, starting to realize that my personal interest in the arla
debian package is starting to disappear due to the long period of
nothingness, and that it's perhaps better that somebody that has the skill
and understanding of the complete debian distribution takes charge of the
package instead.

I do know that there are many people interested in taking over arla the
arla package, and I am not the person to pick one (or more) of them.

/Mikael