I've been wrestling with git-annex to try to make it build on Debian, or more specifically, wrestling with Haskell dependencies.

After a fair amount of futzing around, and pestering a bunch of people in the process (thanks for the help! ) I finally managed to make it build.

I figured I would post the steps here, since it's not completely trivial, and I expect that a few others might be interested in building newer versions as well.

There appears to currently be two methods:

• Debian packages on Wheezy plus Sid
  • Starting out on Wheezy, and then picking the rest from Sid (it seems at least libghc-safesemaphore-dev from Sid is critical for newer git-annex)
  • WebDAV suport will not be available with this method
• Cabal packages

Debian packages on Wheezy plus Sid

Start off with a clean wheezy chroot

sudo debootstrap wheezy debian-wheezy
sudo chroot debian-wheezy

Install some build tools

apt-get update
apt-get install devscripts git

Get git-annex (either by cloning or simply moving the source into the chroot)

mkdir /src
cd /src
git clone git://git-annex.branchable.com/source.git git-annex
cd git-annex

Remove WebDAV dependency which can't be satisfied anywhere

sed '/libghc-dav-dev/d' -i debian/control

Create dummy build-depends package and install all available Wheezy dependencies using it

mk-build-deps
dpkg -i git-annex-build-deps*.deb
apt-get install -f

(this will remove the build-depends package)

Add Sid sources and install all available Sid dependencies

echo "deb http://http.debian.net/debian sid main" >>/etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
dpkg -i git-annex-build-deps*.deb
apt-get install -f

(the build-depends package should now be fully installed)

Disable the 'make test' that fails due to missing hothasktags

echo >>debian/rules
echo "override_dh_auto_test:" >>debian/rules

Build!

debuild -us -uc -Igit

Cabal packages

Start off with a clean Sid(/Wheezy) chroot

sudo debootstrap sid debian-sid
sudo chroot debian-sid

Install a smaller set of tools and build-depends from Debian (cabal needs these to compile the Haskell stuff)

apt-get update
apt-get install ghc cabal-install devscripts libz-dev pkg-config c2hs libgsasl7-dev libxml2-dev libgnutls-dev c2hs git debhelper ikiwiki perlmagick uuid rsync openssh-client fakeroot

Get git-annex (either by cloning or simply moving the source into the chroot)

mkdir /src
cd /src
git clone git://git-annex.branchable.com/source.git git-annex
cd git-annex

Install the Haskell build-dependencies from cabal

cabal update
cabal install --only-dependencies

Optional step which doesn't work (might in the future)

If we want to run the 'make test' after build we need hothasktags, which is only available via cabal

apt-get install happy
cabal install hothasktags
export PATH=$PATH:~/.cabal/bin

But this currently fails silently inside make test->fast->tags, and if you dig a bit (manually edit the makefile to be more verbose) you see

hothasktags: ./Command/AddUnused.hs: hGetContents: invalid argument (invalid byte sequence)

Disable the 'make test' that fails

echo >>debian/rules
echo "override_dh_auto_test:" >>debian/rules

Remove all Debian package haskell depends (taken care of by cabal instead)

sed '/\tlibghc/d' -i debian/control

Build!

debuild -us -uc -Igit