Quick Debian Packaging HOWTO

This is a quick Debian package creation HOWTO for Debian newbies (i.e. me). This is trying to mirror the same kind of process that I use for creating Fedora/RHEL RPMs and is for private packages, so I ignore all of the requiments for changing the upstream software to meet the Debian projects requirements (such as correctly specifying the copyright).

Get packages to do the build:

sudo apt-get install -y pbuilder devscripts

Create working directory:
```
mkdir pkg

cd pkg
```

Grab source:

wget http://example.com/foo-1.2.3.tar.gz

tar zxf foo-1.2.3.tar.gz

cd foo-1.2.3

Build skeleton:

DEBFULLNAME=“Jonathan Barber” dh_make -p foo_1.2.3 -f ../foo-1.2.3.tar.gz  -s -e jbarber@sp.up.pt -c bsd

Add patches to the source, first by adding a completely new file that doesn’t already exist:

export QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches

quilt new makefile.def

quilt add Makefile.def

cat <<‘EOF’ > Makefile.def

…

EOF

quilt refresh

quilt header -e

Add a new diff in a seperate patch:

quilt new install.patch

quilt add Makefile

cat <<‘EOF’ > Makefile

…

EOF

quilt refresh

quilt header -e

Now go back and modify the first patch:



quilt pop

cat <<‘EOF’ > Makefile.def

…

EOF

quilt refresh

quilt push

Modify debian/control to include build dependencies (“Build-Reqs”)

Modify debian/rules so it knows how to build the source

Build source deb:
```
dpkg-buildpackage -S
```

Build .deb in clean environment:



pbuilder —create —distribution stable

(cd ..; pbuilder —build *.dsc)

If it fails, make changes, then rerun:



dpkg-buildpackage -S

(cd ..; pbuilder —build *.dsc)

The output from pbuilder is left in /var/cache/pbuilder/result by default

Outstanding issues are discovering how to build the source package without having all of the Build-Reqs installed. But I don’t know if this is possible…

Further documentation is available at: