Debian .deb file?

[ka9q]

Is anyone working on getting libfobos packaged into Debian Linux? This would make it much easier for me to support the Fobos with ka9q-radio when I also package it as installable Debian packages.

As long as ka9q-radio is built from sources it's not that much more work to also build libfobos, but this is likely to be impractical for the much larger group of people I expect to use ka9q-radio when they can install it with "apt install ka9q-radio".

[UR4MCB]

Is anyone working on getting libfobos packaged into Debian Linux? This would make it much easier for me to support the Fobos with ka9q-radio when I also package it as installable Debian packages.

As long as ka9q-radio is built from sources it's not that much more work to also build libfobos, but this is likely to be impractical for the much larger group of people I expect to use ka9q-radio when they can install it with "apt install ka9q-radio".

Hi Phil,

Thank you for raising this. This is exactly the kind of packaging work that would make Fobos SDR much easier to use from higher-level applications such as ka9q-radio.

We are interested in helping with this. A practical first step could be preparing a Debian packaging draft for libfobos, split into something like:

• libfobosX: runtime shared library
• libfobos-dev: public header and pkg-config file
• fobos-tools: fobos_devinfo / fobos_recorder / fobos_fwloader
• fobos-udev: udev rules for USB permissions

The exact runtime package name should follow the library SONAME.

Before starting, could you please confirm what you need for ka9q-radio:

1. Do you only need the classic/regular libfobos API, or would Agile libfobos_sdr also be useful?
2. Which Debian architectures are important for you first: amd64, arm64, armhf?
3. Is a packaging draft / local .deb build enough for initial integration testing, or are you aiming directly at Debian inclusion?
4. Which minimum libfobos API version do you expect to depend on?

We can help prepare an initial Debian packaging branch so that ka9q-radio can build against libfobos through a normal -dev package instead of requiring users to build libfobos manually.

[ka9q]

Hi, thanks for your reply and for accepting my pull request. I merged it back into my fork, but it doesn't build the package correctly. I'm fixing that now and will submit another PR when I have it working.

For ka9q-radio, I think I'm currently using just the classic API; what is the Agile version? I only target Linux at the moment, though I do try to make things also compile on Macos since it's what I run on my laptop. I run my own Fobos SDR on an amd64 but I also build packages for arm64 (Raspberry Pi in 64-bit mode). I mainly use the Trixie (Debian 13) release on both amd64 and arm64. I also support a few sites running Ubuntu, mainly jammy and noble but none use the Fobos at the moment. I don't use older RPis that require armhf but some might.

When I forked your code and added the debian directory, I began building my own packages and distributing them through http://www.ka9q.net/debian mainly for my own use but others are welcome to them too. Eventually, when things become stable, I'd like to have it included by the regular Debian distributions to make things easier for the end users. Many other ham SDR libraries are already supported in this way.

By the way, I've been using my Fobos with ka9q-radio to monitor the entire VHF airband (118-137 MHz), which it can do because of its wider VHF/UHF coverage than most other VHF/UHF SDRs. It works very well.

[ka9q]

You mentioned following the library SONAME but you apparently don't set one. In my own packaging I used 0, ie, the runtime library package name is libfobos0. Is that correct?

[ka9q]

I just submitted a pull request with my latest revisions for debian packaging.