It is important to understand how the Ximian/Debian patching system for OpenOffice.org 1.1 works if you want to provide your own customized version of the Debian packages for OOo.
First of all, install the sources as told in Getting the sources of OOo (RC3) for Debian. Next, go edit debian/rules to see where apply.pl is called and with which arguments. You can probably see this: $(TOOLS_DIR)/patches/apply.pl $(TOOLS_DIR)/patches/$(PATCH_DIR) $(BUILD_DIR) --distro=Debian -f $PATCH_DIR is taken from debian/scripts/vars, where you can see something like: # Directory of patch apply file PATCH_DIR=OOO_1_1_RC3 It means you should have a look to ooo-build/patches/OOO_1_1_RC3/apply to know which patches are applied, depending on the --distro= option, off course. Patches are taken from the $PATCHPATH directory, which you can read in the apply file.You can now play with the sections [ Ximian, Debian ], or [ Ximian ], or ... you get the point.
The build system will copy each patch into applied_patches at a time just after applying it, prepending a number to its name.
This article was first written in September 2003 for the BeezNest technical website (http://glasnost.beeznest.org/articles/60)
