- Quick build
This tutorial will present you a quick .deb packaging introduction, it maybe sufficient to build a .deb package, it is not sufficient to build a good .deb package. We will assume you will be building a package for a software which uses autotools, compiled with "./configure; make; make install". The source directory must must "packagename-version", let's also copy the original source into "package-version.orig" in so that it will be used by the initial packaging script to track what will be changed on the source tree as part of the packaging process. Once you have the source and source.orig directories as described let's go into the source directory and create the initial structure into the source to create a debian package, from the source run:
dh_make -c gpl -b
This will create a debian/* directory with several template files, a default GPL copyright file was assumed, -b means we will be using CDBS, CDBS provides a set of makefile rules which allows to creates packages using an higher level of abstraction. Now that we have the initial templates and because we assume the source uses autotools we can just build the binary .deb package with:
debuild -uc -us
Thiss will build a package, -uc -us means the package will not be GPG signed. You have build your first .deb package. If you want to change the package description edit debian/control and rebuild it with:
debuild -nc
The -nc option means "no clean", the package will be rebuilt without recompiling the source. You can now explore the debian/* if you like to learn by exploring, otherwise it is time to read a complete guide.