Hello,

There is question that bounces in my mind for quite a long time. Today, I dare to ask it here:
how do you package and use your custom asterisk .deb package ?

The background is:

– I’m now a long time Debian user and I learned to appreciate Debian’s deb package benefits specially when dealing with complex softwares such as Asterisk

– On another hand, new Asterisk versions are regularly published. Looking at Debian’s asterisk source packages, beside patching Asterisk source code, it seems possible to build a new Asterisk 13.X+1 package copying 13.X
package

– If possible (ie not too hard), I would be happy to build and maintain an Asterisk 16.X binary package for Buster (amd targets).

So my questions are:

1. Would you evaluate porting Debian’s patches from one Asterisk version to the next one (Asterisk 16.4 to 16.5, for example), to be a complex or time consuming task ?

2. What is the simplest and safest way to deal with the existence of both custom and original packages ?
Using deb packages terminology, would you simply create a mycustom-asterisk package which both conflicts and provides asterisk, if that is possible ?
Alternatively, is apt-pinning recommended ?

3. Can I realistically hope, that I won’t have to change Asterisk 16
dependencies during Asterisk evolution, at least for Asterisk core features or I shall prepare to also upgrade some libraries ?

4. Suggestions ? Pointers ?

Best regards