# Brief notes on getting createrepo to run on Debian (3.0 in this case) 
# you can skip some of the steps if the packages are already installed
# on the system, they just weren't in this case (readline-dev for example
# surely ships with Debian)

# grab sources someplace .. I used the FC4 versions from
# http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/SRPMS/

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/lib

# No beecrypt..
# unpack beecrypt
./configure --prefix=$HOME --with-java=no --with-python=no
make && make install

# ..nor readline
# unpack readline
./configure --prefix=$HOME 
make && make install

# .. nor neon
# unpack neon
./configure --prefix=$HOME --with-ssl --with-expat --enable-shared
make && make install

# .. nor sqlite, sigh
# unpack sqlite
./configure --prefix=$HOME --disable-tcl

# unpack rpm 
# - Sarge has no selinux
LDFLAGS=-L$HOME/lib CPPFLAGS=-I$HOME/include ./configure --prefix=$HOME
--with-python=2.3 --without-selinux --without-javaglue
make pyincdir=/usr/include/python2.3
make install

export PYTHONPATH=$HOME/lib/python2.3/site-packages

# unpack createrepo
# fix the python paths to 2.3
perl -pi -e "s:/python:/python2.3:g" *.py
# fix /usr/share reference 
perl -pi -e "s:/usr/:$HOME/:g" bin/createrepo
make install prefix=$HOME

# whee .. it runs:
[gotcha]$ cat /etc/debian_version
3.0
[gotcha]$ createrepo .
5/5 - gl-117-1.3.1-1.i386.rpm
Saving Primary metadata
Saving file lists metadata
Saving other metadata
[gotcha]$