Basic Debian Packaging

The Basic Debian Packaging 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 and Command Line 2
basic familiarity with linux
basic understanding of apt and dpkg
familiarity with a text editor

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.

tips for working environment

keep a web browser pointed to this page
open several terminal windows
don't forget to use the "man" command, or -h and --help
commandline reminders
- remember to use tab completion.
- hit tab twice, fast.
- hit tab again!
- remember to use the up arrow to re-do a previous command
- keep hitting tab!

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

the debian directory

creating the debian directory

using dh_make (package dh-make)

dh_make -s -c gpl

dh-make-perl for packaging perl modules

contents of a debian directory

copyright
- add copyright holder's name and relevent copyright

egrep -ri copyright * | less

changelog
- dch (a.k.a. debchange, part of the devscripts package)
- version
- release

dch -i

This is the most important section, and the part that's least susceptible to manpages.

control - what packages are being made, what dependencies there are, who made them, and descriptions
rules - the file that controls the build process
other files (note that these may not be needed for a proper makefile-based source package)
- *.install - in here, put all the files you want installed, first their location in the tree, then a space, then their location in the filesystem, but leave off the root / at the beginning.
- *.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 (i.e. replace rules with the following lines):

#!/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

without gpg keys:

debuild -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.changes

additional and related topics