Re
for your last message:
1/ use 'dpkg-buildpackage' command
2/ all vlc source packages provides the debian/ directory that containes ALL information needed to make a debian package
(vlc team just extract the source, cd vlc-0.8.5 and dpkg-buildpackage, nothing more)
i just installed debian sarge to figure this out: vlc 0.8.5 depends on many libs that simply don't exist in sarge, or are way too old:
dpkg-checkbuilddeps: Unmet build dependencies: gcc-snapshot mozilla-dev (>= 2:1.7.10-1) libaa1-dev libarts1-dev (>= 1.4.2-1) libavahi-client-dev libavcodec-dev (>= 0.cvs20050918-2) libavformat-dev (>= 0.cvs20050918-2) libdvbpsi4-dev libflac-dev (>= 1.1.2-3) libgnutls-dev (>= 1.2.
libhal-dev (>= 0.5.5.1-3) libmatroska-dev (>= 0.7.7) libmpcdec-dev libpostproc-dev (>= 0.cvs20050918-2) libsdl1.2-dev (>= 1.2.7+1.2.8cvs20041007-5.3) libwxgtk2.6-dev
so what you can do is:
- drop a LOT of functionality of vlc to build a package for sarge
- rebuild also all these libraries AND their dependancies if they are outdated too
- switch to unstable
- switch to another distro
sorry for that, but debian stable is too old