Basic Debian Packaging

overview

this class should give a basic understanding of how to build a debian package from some common types of source tarballs or repositories, with the assistance of several helper utilities.

background

prerequisites

basic familiarity with commandline
basic familiarity with linux
Command Line 2
basic understanding of apt and dpkg

suggested background

rudimentary understanding of building and compiling software
basic understanding of cvs or subversion

terms

upstream

the source of the software- the originating author, the current development team

downstream

the packager of software- a debian maintainer

most of ubuntu's software comes directly from debian, so debian would be considered upstream to ubuntu. most of debian's packages come from other projects, such as GNU, Linux, KDE and GNOME, which would be considered upstream to debian.

top level of source directory

the directory in which the source code is unpacked.

topics covered

prep work

finding software

is it already packaged:
- packages.debian.org
other sources of software:
- freshmeat.net
- sourceforge.net
- google.com

grab and unpack a tarball

gnu hello:

wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/hello-2.1.1.tar.gz
tar xvzf hello-2.1.1.tar.gz

environment variables

DEBEMAIL
DEBFULLNAME
EDITOR

DEBEMAIL=yourname@example.com 
EDITOR=nano
DEBFULLNAME="Your Name Here"
export DEBEMAIL DEBFULLNAME EDITOR

creating debian directory

using dh_make (package dh-make)

dh_make -s -c gpl

dh-make-perl

contents of a debian directory

copyright
- add copyright holder's name and relevent copyright

egrep -ri copyright * | less

changelog
- dch
- version
- release

dch -i

control
rules
other files
- *.install
- *.manpages
- *.examples
- *.init
- *.postinst
- *.postrm
other examples: *.ex and *.EX files

cdbs basics

add cdbs to build-depends or build-depends-indep debian/control

magic snippet for a complete debian/rules file:

#!/usr/bin/make -f
# uncomment the next line if using a makefile-based source
#include /usr/share/cdbs/1/class/makefile.mk
# uncomment the next line if using a autotools-based source
#include /usr/share/cdbs/1/class/autotools.mk
include /usr/share/cdbs/1/rules/debhelper.mk

look in /usr/share/cdbs/1/class for more source types

debuild

commandline arguments: -uc -us

basic troubleshooting

lesspipe

lesspipe ../hello_2.1.1_i386.deb | less

build dependencies
package dependencies
- install in a clean debian base-install
- pbuilder/sbuild

lintian

debian policy checker

lintian -i ../hello_2.1.1_i386.deb

additional and related topics