No "Make Install" for Packaging: feedback requested

[calumapplepie]

I am trying to package whitakers-words for Debian, but there is no Make Install target. I know that the program is designed to operate entirely in one directory, however, that is not possible to package for Debian. I think I understand how to patch the program to make this possible, but I wanted to post here to get some feedback / give updates.

Firstly, I'd need to change the file names. From what I can tell, if I replace the filename variables in src/latin_utils/latin_utils-latin_file_names.ads with fully-qualified file names (eg, /usr/share/whitakers-words/dict), and comment out the portion of the Add_File_Name_Extension() function that trims filenames. That is, of course, assuming that Ada works the way I think it will

If I did that successfully, I think I can put the words executable in /usr/bin, and the data files in /usr/share. If I do this in the Makefile, implementing DESTDIR, the Debian packaging practically finishes itself.

The big issue I see with this is the risk that some code logic will patch the filenames to refer only to the current directory. I'll try to trace the code path further up, and figure out where/if that is done, and stop it.

The final packaging would still have issues, of course: as described, users wouldn't be able to add custom words, because (a) the utility executables wouldn't be shipped, and (b) the user-defined files would have to be in a separate folder from the shipped files. However, fixing those problems would probably require significantly more effort and changes: for instance, patching the utilities to work as subcommands of, say, whitakers-words-utils, or reworking the file location logic entirely. I am not nearly comfortable enough with Ada to attempt that.