ubuntu packages' spec files

[Michael Hipp]

Man-wai Chang wrote:
> How could I find them out? I want to compile my own packages from source
> codes using the spec files used to build those stable packages. I knew
> the RPM way (my Caldera Openlinux days), but not the debian way.

I know next to nothing about packaging debs, but here's what I had to do to 
build my own version of 'sox' since the packager had given the one in the 
repository a strange build option:

sudo apt-get install build-essentials fakeroot devscripts
sudo apt-get build-dep sox
apt-get source sox
cd sox-12.17.5/debian
vi rules   # Make some edits here to the deb build script
cd ..
debuild -uc -us
cd ~
sudo dpkg -?install sox_12.17.5-4_i386.deb

I imagine it wouldn't be too hard for starters to take that downloaded source 
and replace it with whatever you're trying to build leaving the packaging 
stuff in place.

Hope this is some small help,
Michael