Debian Packaging

Notes and other various tutorials on how to package .deb files for Debian based distributions

Debian Packaging Tutorial by Gürkan Myczko

Debian Packaging

pretty much the same with Ubuntu

2003-2020 Gürkan Myczko <gurkan@phys.ethz.ch>

Introduction

We will package mguesser for Debian. Knowledge about Makefiles, configure and shell scripting or C programming can be very helpful. Man and the manpages are also very useful. Also have a look at help2man or pod2man. I want to guide you packaging mguesser from the beginning to the end.

What you will need

A development environment, some utilities and debhelper which we will install like this:

  # apt-get install binutils cpp cpio dpkg-dev file gcc make patch \
                    dh-make debhelper devscripts fakeroot lintian \
                    debian-policy developers-reference \
                    man-db manpages reportbug

(or build-essential lintian debhelper dh-make devscripts fakeroot)

Setting up the environment, see www.linuks.mine.nu/conf/. Of course you fill in your email address and your full name and choose your favourite editor, these settings is what I use:

  $ export DEBEMAIL="gurkan@phys.ethz.ch"
  $ export DEBFULLNAME="Gürkan Myczko"
  $ export EDITOR=mcedit

Choosing software you want to package for Debian

For this course I have chosen mguesser, as I packaged it already and it is not too hard (single binary) to get you started. This should give you an idea what it is like. For Debian the package

• must be DFSG compliant
• must have some public download place (usually http/https, or ftp)
• naming should be software-maj.min.tar.gz and unpacks into software-maj.min/

Build systems

There are plenty of build systems. The most classical ones are

  make; make install

  ./configure; make; make install

  mk (Plan 9)

  cmake (ccmake is handy sometimes)

  scons

  qmake (for qt based software)

  gnustep-make

  bazel

Plenty more to check out at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_build_automation_software

Packaging the software

First you need to get the source of the software. Then put it in some directory. There you unpack the software, usually

  tar xzvf software-2.1.tar.gz
  ln -s software-2.1.tar.gz software_2.1.orig.tar.gz
  cd software-2.1/
  dh_make

dh_make will make a directory called debian/ with a few files in it. Now your task is to fill them. I usually start with control, then edit copyright. There is also changelog, rules, dirs and more. In rules you will find some dh commands, they are all from debhelper. Each of them has a manpage, please refer to man debhelper for details, as well as the Debian New Maintainers' Guide. Read more about the Debian Policy Manual. Updating the debian/changelog is done with dch or debchange (symlink).

When you think the thing is ready, you can start building the package

The most important files are probably debian/changelog, debian/control, debian/copyright, debian/rules and the following ones are helpful

debian/clean files to be removed that get generated at build time (make clean)

debian/install files to be installed

debian/manpages manpage(s) to be installed

You will find licensecheck -r . | grep -v UNKNOWN useful during the writing of debian/copyright.

  $ debuild

When things are built you should check the package using

  $ lintian -vi mguesser_0.2-1_i386.changes

If that says all is right (no Warnings or Errors). You can install it with

  $ sudo dpkg -i mguesser_0.2-1_i386.deb

You must check if the program works. Also make sure the manpage is working. From what I experienced I will most likely to have go through this several times.

Never forget reportbug, it will be your friend. When you package something from http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/requested you can close the bug also with an e-mail to <number>-done@bugs.debian.org. If you don't know what to package, check orphaned packages.

It can be helpful to look at how other packages are packaged

  $ apt-get source package

And being in touch with upstream is important, contact them somehow. My debian/ directory for mguesser. Here is my Makefile changes.

Ensuring completeness of Build-Depends Use `sbuild` to ensure build-depends are complete:

  apt-get install sbuild
  mkdir -p /srv/chroot/sid
  sbuild-createchroot --include=eatmydata,ccache,gnupg unstable /srv/chroot/sid http://deb.debian.org/debian

Now test your packages with:

  sbuild -d sid yourpackage_version-rev.dsc

After Work

Adding a screenshot to the package is recommended: http://screenshots.debian.net/

Tagging the package is also a good idea: https://debtags.debian.org/

Check Lintian output: https://lintian.debian.org/

I did not go into detail with debian/watch.

Make sure it builds on as many architectures as possible: https://buildd.debian.org/

If your software works with data files, that can be detected with the file(5) utility, send patches for its detection.

Links

A good source for free software https://github.com All Debian project participants www.debian.org/devel/people

Other packaging systems (ports, pkg, rpm)

Freebsd: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/

Solaris: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26505_01/html/E28550/ch2buildpkg-17051.html

RedHat: https://access.redhat.com/sites/default/files/attachments/rpm_building_practice_10082013.pdf

macOS: https://guide.macports.org/#project.contributing

Spack: https://github.com/spack/spack

flatpak/flathub: https://flatpak.org/ / https://flathub.org/

Ubuntu Snap: https://snapcraft.io/

Checkinstall

checkinstall keeps track of all the files created or modified by your installation script, builds a standard binary package (.deb, .rpm, .tgz) and installs it in your system giving you the ability to uninstall it with your distribution's standard package management utilities.

You have an archive with software to build.

• Normal install

  ./configure
  make
  make install
  make clean

• Build and use checkinstall to install and build the .deb file

  ./configure
  make
  checkinstall

• Build and use checkinstall to create the .deb file without installing it

  ./configure
  make
  checkinstall --install=no

Refer to the man page for more information