Input: Debian Packaging Guide
I’m trying to find different debian packaging guides for some work I’m doing for two people. If you know of a good guide that is simple to use and contains both explanations and instructions, then I want to hear from you at the bottom of this page in the comments.
Hopefully this will also help others who read this and have been lookign for a good guide to building their own packages. My own knowledge obout debian packages is very limited in that I can make them, but I don’t quite know why they work.
I recommend you:
- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide to have an easy and detailed overview about the topic;
- http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/index.en.html good to get deeper and improve your knowledge;
- http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ the official Debian Policy every deb package must comply with. Quite long, but absolutely necessary for high quality packages.
I found this https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/Complete helpful when i tried to create my first package but it is not for debian but maybe compatible.
I did not check this guide http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ch-first.en.html but it maybe helpful.
http://pkg-perl.alioth.debian.org/ contains a few useful guides. Although they are focused on skills related to packaging Perl modules, most of the information can be applied to other types of packages.
http://wiki.showmedo.com/index.php/LinuxJensMakingDeb
I found this example to be very informative on creating python packages.
http://mysite.verizon.net/kevin.mark/debian-package.png
let me know if this is useful and if you see anything needed correction or clarification.
for the ‘big picture’ you can look here:
http://mysite.verizon.net/kevin.mark/newdebian2.png
but it is not useful for packaging
Depends on what you need I find this: http://en.opensuse.org/Build_Service/Deb_builds a very short, quick & dirty guide that you can comprehend and learn quickly.
And it depends on what you actually need. If your customers want to disctirbute their product. it’s a matter of installing everything in to a prefix adding a toplevel DEBIAN dir with a little metada and a dpkg-deb to create a no fuss binary deb. For example Chrome is packaged like that and it is linked statically against everything.
If you are doing OpenSource Packaging guides suggested above are more suitable as those guides will guarantee a longer lived packaged & easier maintainance.
Just remember it’s a makefile, compiling installing into prefix & adding metadata. The rest is bells & whistles.