I've been wrestling with git-annex to try to make it build on Debian, or more specifically, wrestling with Haskell dependencies.

After a fair amount of futzing around, and pestering a bunch of people in the process (thanks for the help! :) ) I finally managed to make it build.

I figured I would post the steps here, since it's not completely trivial, and I expect that a few others might be interested in building newer versions as well.

There appears to currently be two methods:

* Debian packages on Wheezy plus Sid
  * Starting out on Wheezy, and then picking the rest from Sid (it seems at least libghc-safesemaphore-dev from Sid is critical for newer git-annex)
  * WebDAV suport will not be available with this method
* Cabal packages


#Debian packages on Wheezy plus Sid

##Start off with a clean wheezy chroot

    sudo debootstrap wheezy debian-wheezy
    sudo chroot debian-wheezy

##Install some build tools

    apt-get update
    apt-get install devscripts git

##Get git-annex (either by cloning or simply moving the source into the chroot)

    mkdir /src
    cd /src
    git clone git://git-annex.branchable.com/source.git git-annex
    cd git-annex

##Remove WebDAV dependency which can't be satisfied anywhere

    sed '/libghc-dav-dev/d' -i debian/control

##Create dummy build-depends package and install all available Wheezy dependencies using it

    mk-build-deps
    dpkg -i git-annex-build-deps*.deb
    apt-get install -f

(this will remove the build-depends package)

##Add Sid sources and install all available Sid dependencies

    echo "deb http://http.debian.net/debian sid main" >>/etc/apt/sources.list
    apt-get update
    dpkg -i git-annex-build-deps*.deb
    apt-get install -f

(the build-depends package should now be fully installed)

##Disable the 'make test' that fails due to missing hothasktags

    echo >>debian/rules
    echo "override_dh_auto_test:" >>debian/rules

##Build!

    debuild -us -uc -Igit


#Cabal packages

##Start off with a clean Sid(/Wheezy) chroot

    sudo debootstrap sid debian-sid
    sudo chroot debian-sid

##Install a smaller set of tools and build-depends from Debian (cabal needs these to compile the Haskell stuff)

    apt-get update
    apt-get install ghc cabal-install devscripts libz-dev pkg-config c2hs libgsasl7-dev libxml2-dev libgnutls-dev c2hs git debhelper ikiwiki perlmagick uuid rsync openssh-client fakeroot

##Get git-annex (either by cloning or simply moving the source into the chroot)

    mkdir /src
    cd /src
    git clone git://git-annex.branchable.com/source.git git-annex
    cd git-annex

##Install the Haskell build-dependencies from cabal

    cabal update
    cabal install --only-dependencies

##Optional step which doesn't work (might in the future)
If we want to run the 'make test' after build we need hothasktags, which is only available via cabal

    apt-get install happy
    cabal install hothasktags
    export PATH=$PATH:~/.cabal/bin

But this currently fails silently inside make test->fast->tags, and if you dig a bit (manually edit the makefile to be more verbose) you see

    hothasktags: ./Command/AddUnused.hs: hGetContents: invalid argument (invalid byte sequence)

##Disable the 'make test' that fails

    echo >>debian/rules
    echo "override_dh_auto_test:" >>debian/rules

##Remove all Debian package haskell depends (taken care of by cabal instead)

    sed '/\tlibghc/d' -i debian/control

## Build!

    debuild -us -uc -Igit