I've made some ground...
A debian package is simply an archive file with tarballs. Here is what a stock webOS package looks like...
# ar tv packagename.ipk
rw-r--r-- 0/0 6582 Jun 18 00:44 2009 cert.pem
rw-r--r-- 0/0 265 Jun 18 00:44 2009 control.tar.gz
rw-r--r-- 0/0 877233 Jun 18 00:44 2009 data.tar.gz
rw-r--r-- 0/0 4 Jun 18 00:44 2009 debian-binary
rw-r--r-- 0/0 800 Jun 18 00:44 2009 pubkey.pem
rw-r--r-- 0/0 512 Jun 18 00:44 2009 signature.sha1
The control file looks like this...
Package: com.lumoslabs.speed-brain
Version: 0.9.13
Section: misc
Priority: optional
Architecture: all
Maintainer: lumoslabs <palm@palm.com>
Description: Speed Brain
Installed-Size: 943
The data.tar.gz file has an _absolute_ path of /usr/palm/applications/com.whateverprogram
So to create a webos package...
edit the control file and tarball it
also tarball /usr/palm/applications/com.appname to data.tar.gz
not sure about the signature yet, probably can't steal from another app, or once you create the key...
archive the whole thing..
ar -r (package name).ipk files
I'm stuck on getting an absolute path because the data tarball wants the /usr/palm/applications with absolute path (with a leading slash, not a leading dot). The default to create with tar is relative paths. The tar command included with webOS doesn't appear to allow the -P flag to do absolute paths. I need to load a full feature tar or tar on a linux box. Have run out of time, need to get going for dinner tonite. Maybe someone will beat me to this by the time I can work on this tomorrow. I challenge all devheads out there to waste your Saturday night and beat me to it.