I am not sure this is the ideal solution.

First a patch should probably be pushed upstream if possible. I emailed
Philip Lamb at ARToolworks to see if they are accepting patches for the
GPL version.

Second, I would prefer not modifying the tarball directly as it is
supposed to be a snapshot of the ARToolkit SVN. I think the preferred
route is to use patch and replace the patch_v4l kludge.

It is probably clearer what something like the patch system for the
canonical scan matcher is doing.
ccny-ros-pkg/scan_tools/csm/Makefile
----
patch:
ifneq (,$(wildcard $(BUILD_DIR)/.patched))
        @echo Patching CSM
        cd $(SOURCE_DIR) && patch -p0 < ../../patch_a
        cd $(SOURCE_DIR) && patch -p0 < ../../patch_b
        cd $(SOURCE_DIR) && patch -p0 < ../../patch_c
        touch $(BUILD_DIR)/.patched
else
        @echo CSM previously patched, use 'make wipe' to completely
remove build directory.
endif

wipe: clean
        rm -rf $(BUILD_DIR)
----

Is there a REP for third party packages?

On Sat, 2011-10-08 at 17:59 -0500, Piyush wrote: 
> This is correct - the patch was only for Natty. For some weird reason
> I assumed that the debs could be built externally without pushing this
> change to the repository. It was a bad idea in the first place.
> 
> I will see if I can work on this later tonight - the patch is still
> relatively easy based on what Bill suggests, and will require
> modifying ARToolKit's custom configuration script to provide the
> LIBV4L1 flag as necessary.
> 
> Piyush


-- 
Bill Morris <bill@iheartengineering.com>
I Heart Engineering
http://www.iheartengineering.com
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