Can I fetch a .deb, plus all .debs it depends on?

Question

I'm running a rather restricted virtual ubuntu environment on a virtualization platform that doesn't yet support networking. I need to benchmark a compilation, but my guest does not have build-essential installed. I'd like to perform an installation from a .deb, but I'm going to have to pull down all the required packages as well.

To make matters worse, my host is x86, but my guest is ARM. Can I do something like the following: tell apt-get to pretend that a certain set of packages is already installed, pull down the required .debs, and pretend like it's working on an ARM system?

This is a tall order, I know, so help with any part of this chain would be appreciated.

Answer 1

When I want to fetch a .deb for Ubuntu, I do the following: For example, if the release is for Maverick, I type in the following URL to get any one of all of the Maverick packages (for x86):

http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/allpackages

Note: follow the specific package links from the base release web page (e.g. maverick as above) to the download page for the specific package, and it will tell you along the way what other packages it depends upon

Since your problem is an ARM related guest on an x86 host, you may need to do (at least) the following:

1) Download the source code of the packages you require, including build-essentisl using the Synaptic Package Manager

2) What you are looking to do is to cross-compile the source code from a host architecture (x86) to a target architecture (ARM) for the guest, and then create a .deb for the target which would get installed in the virtual guest (ARM). Gcc technology for the compiler should be able to handle this. Corretion: since you don't have an ARM architecture - I am not sure how a virtual ARM will work on an x86 hosted environment, so, you may not have to cross-compile except in a real environment with an ARM architecture - so,ignore 2). Tom

3) You may be able to create .deb packages with ubucompilator (purported to be an easy way of creating .deb packages

4) See following reference:

Ubucompilator - Easy way of creating .deb packages from source files at: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ubucompilator-easy-way-of-creating-deb-packages-from-source-files.html