[Oisf-users] Latest stable/oldstable on Debian Buster

[Sascha Steinbiss]

Hi,

(Disclaimer: Just my 2 cents... Pierre or Arturo might see things
differently)

>> I was going to upload a backport of Suricata 5 to Debian, but there were
>> a few dependencies that had to be accepted into backports first (mostly
>> libhtp in its latest version).
>> I'll take a look to get Suricata itself in soon, when I find the time :)
> 
> Wonder if it makes sense for us to have a version of the debian/
> directory in our tree so ppl can just 'dpkg-buildpackage'.

Please don't do this, at least not in the releases. It complicates
things as your ("upstream") one and the one we use for the official
Debian packaging will most likely diverge.
See the Debian Upstream Guide (https://wiki.debian.org/UpstreamGuide):

"Some projects include a rough /debian directory among source files to
ease bleeding-edge package compilation and installation on Debian (and
derived) systems. While this is a good effort, it is better to leave it
out of the final tarball as it can interfere with debian's own packaging
effort. Keeping it only in your VCS repository is usually a much saner
default if it lives in a specific packaging branch, which mimics what
Debian package maintainers do using git-buildpackage. Though leaving the
debian folder in the normal branch can also interfere if the package
maintainer is using an upstream git packaging workflow (for example: git
tag based git-buildpackage workflow)."

Suricata usually builds fine from source on Debian as described in the
general documentation, as long as the build dependencies are installed.
E.g.:

apt install libbpf-dev clang llvm libcap-ng-dev libelf-dev libevent-dev
libgeoip-dev libhiredis-dev libjansson-dev libluajit-5.1-dev
libhyperscan-dev rustc cargo liblz4-dev libmagic-dev libmaxminddb-dev
libnet1-dev libnetfilter-log-dev libnetfilter-queue-dev libnspr4-dev
libnss3-dev libpcap-dev  libpcre3-dev libprelude-dev libyaml-dev python3
zlib1g-dev procps

should get you everything one needs to build with autogen -> configure
-> make -> make install.

Cheers
Sascha