Debian New Maintainers' Guide --------------------------------------------------------------------- Josip Rodin original contents  Osamu Aoki updated contents  version 1.2.53 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 1998-2002 Josip Rodin Copyright © 2005-2015 Osamu Aoki Copyright © 2010 Craig Small Copyright © 2010 Raphaël Hertzog     This document may be used under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or higher.     This document was made using these two documents as examples: * Making a Debian Package (AKA the Debmake Manual), copyright © 1997 Jaldhar Vyas. * The New-Maintainer's Debian Packaging Howto, copyright © 1997     Will Lowe. The rewrite of this tutorial document with updated contents and more practical examples is available as "Guide for Debian Maintainers". Please use this new tutorial as the primary tutorial document. 2022-10-08 03:52:48 UTC --------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents 1. Getting started The Right Way 1.1. Social dynamics of Debian 1.2. Programs needed for development 1.3. Documentation needed for development 1.4. Where to ask for help 2. First steps 2.1. Debian package building workflow 2.2. Choose your program 2.3. Get the program, and try it out 2.4. Simple build systems 2.5. Popular portable build systems 2.6. Package name and version 2.7. Setting up dh_make 2.8. Initial non-native Debian package 3. Modifying the source 3.1. Setting up quilt 3.2. Fixing upstream bugs 3.3. Installation of files to their destination 3.4. Differing libraries 4. Required files under the debian directory 4.1. control 4.2. copyright 4.3. changelog 4.4. rules 4.4.1. Targets of the rules file 4.4.2. Default rules file 4.4.3. Customization of rules file 5. Other files under the debian directory 5.1. README.Debian 5.2. compat 5.3. conffiles 5.4. package.cron.* 5.5. dirs 5.6. package.doc-base 5.7. docs 5.8. emacsen-* 5.9. package.examples 5.10. package.init and package.default 5.11. install 5.12. package.info 5.13. package.links 5.14. {package.,source/}lintian-overrides 5.15. manpage.* 5.15.1. manpage.1.ex 5.15.2. manpage.sgml.ex 5.15.3. manpage.xml.ex 5.16. package.manpages 5.17. NEWS 5.18. {pre,post}{inst,rm} 5.19. package.symbols 5.20. TODO 5.21. watch 5.22. source/format 5.23. source/local-options 5.24. source/options 5.25. patches/* 6. Building the package 6.1. Complete (re)build 6.2. Autobuilder 6.3. debuild command 6.4. pbuilder package 6.5. git-buildpackage command and similar 6.6. Quick rebuild 6.7. Command hierarchy 7. Checking the package for errors 7.1. Suspicious changes 7.2. Verifying a package's installation 7.3. Verifying a package's maintainer scripts 7.4. Using lintian 7.5. The debc command 7.6. The debdiff command 7.7. The interdiff command 7.8. The mc command 8. Updating the package 8.1. New Debian revision 8.2. Inspection of the new upstream release 8.3. New upstream release 8.4. Updating the packaging style 8.5. UTF-8 conversion 8.6. Reminders for updating packages 9. Uploading the package 9.1. Uploading to the Debian archive 9.2. Including orig.tar.gz for upload 9.3. Skipped uploads A. Advanced packaging A.1. Shared libraries A.2. Managing debian/package.symbols A.3. Multiarch A.4. Building a shared library package A.5. Native Debian package Chapter 1. Getting started The Right Way The rewrite of this tutorial document with updated contents and     more practical examples is available as Guide for Debian Maintainers. Please use this new tutorial as the primary tutorial document. This document tries to describe the building of a Debian package to ordinary Debian users and prospective developers. It uses     fairly non-technical language, and it's well covered with working examples. There is an old Latin saying: Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla (It's a long way by the rules, but short and efficient with examples). This document is made available for the Debian Buster release     since this offers many translations. This document will be dropped in the following releases since contents are getting outdated. ^[1] One of the things that makes Debian such a top-notch distribution is its package system. While there is a vast quantity of software already in the Debian format, sometimes you need to install software that isn't. You may be wondering how you can make your     own packages; and perhaps you think it is a very difficult task. Well, if you are a real novice on Linux, it is hard, but if you were a rookie, you wouldn't be reading this document now :-) You do need to know a little about Unix programming but you certainly don't need to be a wizard. ^[2] One thing is certain, though: to properly create and maintain     Debian packages takes many hours. Make no mistake, for our system to work the maintainers need to be both technically competent and diligent.     If you need some help with packaging, please read Section 1.4, “Where to ask for help”. Newer versions of this document should always be available online at http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ and in the maint-guide     package. The translations may be available in packages such as maint-guide-es. Please note that this documentation may be slightly outdated. Since this is a tutorial, I choose to explain each detailed step for some important topics. Some of them may look irrelevant to     you. Please be patient. I have also intentionally skipped some corner cases and provided only pointers to keep this document simple. 1.1. Social dynamics of Debian Here are some observations of Debian's social dynamics, presented     in the hope that it will prepare you for interactions with Debian: * We all are volunteers. + You cannot impose on others what to do. + You should be motivated to do things by yourself. * Friendly cooperation is the driving force. + Your contribution should not overstrain others. + Your contribution is valuable only when others appreciate it.     * Debian is not your school where you get automatic attention of teachers. + You should be able to learn many things by yourself. + Attention from other volunteers is a very scarce resource. * Debian is constantly improving. + You are expected to make high quality packages. + You should adapt yourself to change.     There are several types of people interacting around Debian with different roles: * upstream author: the person who made the original program. * upstream maintainer: the person who currently maintains the program. * maintainer: the person making the Debian package of the program. * sponsor: a person who helps maintainers to upload packages to     the official Debian package archive (after checking their contents). * mentor: a person who helps novice maintainers with packaging etc. * Debian Developer (DD): a member of the Debian project with full upload rights to the official Debian package archive. * Debian Maintainer (DM): a person with limited upload rights to the official Debian package archive. Please note that you cannot become an official Debian Developer (DD) overnight, because it takes more than technical skill.     Please do not be discouraged by this. If it is useful to others, you can still upload your package either as a maintainer through a sponsor or as a Debian Maintainer. Please note that you do not need to create any new package to become an official Debian Developer. Contributing to the existing     packages can provide a path to becoming an official Debian Developer too. There are many packages waiting for good maintainers (see Section 2.2, “Choose your program”). Since we focus only on technical aspects of packaging in this     document, please refer to the following to learn how Debian functions and how you can get involved: * Debian: 17 years of Free Software, "do-ocracy", and democracy (Introductory slides) * How can you help Debian? (official) * The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ, Chapter 13 - "Contributing to the     Debian Project" (semi-official) * Debian Wiki, HelpDebian (supplemental) * Debian New Member site (official) * Debian Mentors FAQ (supplemental) 1.2. Programs needed for development Before you start anything, you should make sure that you have properly installed some additional packages needed for     development. Note that the list doesn't contain any packages marked essential or required - we expect that you have those installed already. The following packages come with the standard Debian     installation, so you probably have them already (along with any additional packages they depend on). Still, you should check them with aptitude show package or with dpkg -s package. The most important package to install on your development system     is the build-essential package. Once you try to install that, it will pull in other packages required to have a basic build environment. For some types of packages, that is all you will require;     however, there is another set of packages that while not essential for all package builds are useful to have installed or may be required by your package: * autoconf, automake, and autotools-dev - many newer programs use configure scripts and Makefile files preprocessed with the help of programs like these (see info autoconf, info automake). autotools-dev keeps up-to-date versions of certain auto files and has documentation about the best way to use those files. * debhelper and dh-make - dh-make is necessary to create the skeleton of our example package, and it will use some of the debhelper tools for creating packages. They are not essential for this purpose, but are highly recommended for new maintainers. It makes the whole process very much easier to start, and to control afterwards. (See dh_make(8), debhelper (1).) ^[3] The new debmake may be used as the alternative to the standard dh-make. It does more and comes with HTML documentation with extensive packaging examples in debmake-doc. * devscripts - this package contains some useful scripts that can be helpful for maintainers, but they are also not necessary for building packages. Packages recommended and suggested by this package are worth looking into. (See /usr/ share/doc/devscripts/README.gz.) * fakeroot - this utility lets you emulate being root, which is necessary for some parts of the build process. (See fakeroot (1).) * file - this handy program can determine what type a file is. (See file(1).) * gfortran - the GNU Fortran 95 compiler, necessary if your program is written in Fortran. (See gfortran(1).) * git - this package provides a popular version control system designed to handle very large projects with speed and efficiency; it is used for many high profile open source projects, most notably the Linux kernel. (See git(1), git Manual (/usr/share/doc/git-doc/index.html).) * gnupg - a tool that enables you to digitally sign packages. This is especially important if you want to distribute     packages to other people, and you will certainly be doing that when your work gets included in the Debian distribution. (See gpg(1).) * gpc - the GNU Pascal compiler, necessary if your program is written in Pascal. Worthy of note here is fp-compiler, the Free Pascal Compiler, which is also good at this task. (See gpc(1), ppc386(1).) * lintian - this is the Debian package checker, which lets you know of any common mistakes after you build the package and explains the errors found. (See lintian(1), Lintian User's Manual.) * patch - this very useful utility will take a file containing a difference listing (produced by the diff program) and apply it to the original file, producing a patched version. (See patch(1).) * patchutils - this package contains some utilities to work with patches such as the lsdiff, interdiff and filterdiff commands. * pbuilder - this package contains programs which are used for creating and maintaining a chroot environment. Building a Debian package in this chroot environment verifies the proper build dependency and avoids FTBFS (Fails To Build From Source) bugs. (see pbuilder(8) and pdebuild(1)) * perl - Perl is one of the most used interpreted scripting languages on today's Unix-like systems, often referred to as Unix's Swiss Army Chainsaw. (See perl(1).) * python - Python is another of the most used interpreted scripting languages on the Debian system, combining remarkable power with very clear syntax. (See python(1).) * quilt - this package helps you to manage large numbers of patches by keeping track of the changes each patch makes. Patches can be applied, un-applied, refreshed, and more. (See quilt(1), and /usr/share/doc/quilt/quilt.pdf.gz.) * xutils-dev - some programs, usually those made for X11, also use these programs to generate Makefile files from sets of macro functions. (See imake(1), xmkmf(1).) The short descriptions that are given above only serve to introduce you to what each package does. Before continuing please read the documentation of each relevant program including ones     installed through the package dependency such as make, at least, for the standard usage. It may seem like heavy going now, but later on you'll be very glad you read it. If you have specific questions later, I would suggest re-reading the documents mentioned above. 1.3. Documentation needed for development     The following is the very important documentation which you should read along with this document: * debian-policy - the Debian Policy Manual includes explanations of the structure and contents of the Debian archive, several OS design issues, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS, which says where each file and directory should be), etc. For you, the most important thing is that it describes requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in the distribution. (See the local copies of /usr/ share/doc/debian-policy/policy.pdf.gz and /usr/share/doc/     debian-policy/fhs/fhs-3.0.pdf.gz.) * developers-reference - the Debian Developer's Reference describes all matters not specifically about the technical details of packaging, like the structure of the archive, how to rename, orphan, or adopt packages, how to do NMUs, how to manage bugs, best packaging practices, when and where to upload, etc. (See the local copy of /usr/share/doc/ developers-reference/developers-reference.pdf.)     The following is the important documentation which you should read along with this document: * Autotools Tutorial provides a very good tutorial for the GNU Build System known as the GNU Autotools, whose most important components are Autoconf, Automake, Libtool, and gettext. * gnu-standards - this package contains two pieces of     documentation from the GNU project: GNU Coding Standards, and Information for Maintainers of GNU Software. Although Debian does not require these to be followed, these are still helpful as guidelines and common sense. (See the local copies of /usr/share/doc/gnu-standards/standards.pdf.gz and /usr/ share/doc/gnu-standards/maintain.pdf.gz.) If this document contradicts any of the documents mentioned     above, they are correct. Please file a bug report on the maint-guide package using reportbug.     The following is an alternative tutorial document that you may read along with this document:     * Debian Packaging Tutorial 1.4. Where to ask for help     Before you decide to ask your question in some public place, please read this fine documentation: * files in /usr/share/doc/package for all pertinent packages * contents of man command for all pertinent commands * contents of info command for all pertinent commands     * contents of debian-mentors@lists.debian.org mailing list archive * contents of debian-devel@lists.debian.org mailing list archive     You can use web search engines more effectively by including search strings such as site:lists.debian.org to limit the domain. Making a small test package is a good way to learn details of     packaging. Inspecting existing well maintained packages is the best way to learn how other people make packages. If you still have questions about packaging that you couldn't     find answers to in the available documentation and web resources, you can ask them interactively: * debian-mentors@lists.debian.org mailing list. (This mailing list is for the novice.) * debian-devel@lists.debian.org mailing list. (This mailing list is for the expert.) * IRC such as #debian-mentors.     * Teams focusing on a specific set of packages. (Full list at https://wiki.debian.org/Teams) * Language-specific mailing lists such as debian-devel- {french,italian,portuguese,spanish}@lists.debian.org or debian-devel@debian.or.jp. (Full listing at https:// lists.debian.org/devel.html and https://lists.debian.org/ users.html)     The more experienced Debian developers will gladly help you, if you ask properly after making your required efforts. When you receive a bug report (yes, actual bug reports!), you will know that it is time for you to dig into the Debian Bug     Tracking System and read the documentation there, to be able to deal with the reports efficiently. I highly recommend reading the Debian Developer's Reference, 5.8. "Handling bugs". Even if it all worked well, it's time to start praying. Why? Because in just a few hours (or days) users from all around the     world will start to use your package, and if you made some critical error you'll get mailbombed by numerous angry Debian users… Just kidding. :-) Relax and be ready for bug reports, because there is a lot more     work to be done before your package will be fully in line with Debian policies and its best practice guidelines (once again, read the real documentation for details). Good luck! --------------------------------------------------------------------- ^[1] The document assumes you are using a jessie or newer system.     If you need to follow this text in an older system (including an older Ubuntu system etc.), you must install backported dpkg and debhelper packages, at least. ^[2] You can learn about the basic handling of a Debian system     from the Debian Reference. It contains some pointers to learn about Unix programming, too.     ^[3] There are also some more specialized but similar packages such as dh-make-perl, dh-make-php, etc. Chapter 2. First steps The rewrite of this tutorial document with updated contents and     more practical examples is available as Guide for Debian Maintainers. Please use this new tutorial as the primary tutorial document.     Let's start by creating a package of your own (or, even better, adopting an existing one). 2.1. Debian package building workflow If you are making a Debian package with an upstream program, the     typical workflow of Debian package building involves generating several specifically named files for each step as follows: * Get a copy of the upstream software, usually in a compressed tar format. + package-version.tar.gz * Add Debian-specific packaging modifications to the upstream program under the debian directory, and create a non-native source package (that is, the set of input files used for Debian package building) in 3.0 (quilt) format.     + package_version.orig.tar.gz + package_version-revision.debian.tar.gz^[4] + package_version-revision.dsc * Build Debian binary packages, which are ordinary installable package files in .deb format (or .udeb format, used by the Debian Installer) from the Debian source package. + package_version-revision_arch.deb Please note that the character separating package and version was     changed from - (hyphen) in the tarball name to _ (underscore) in the Debian package filenames. In the file names above, replace the package part with the package name, the version part with the upstream version, the     revision part with the Debian revision, and the arch part with the package architecture, as defined in the Debian Policy Manual. ^[5]     Each step of this outline is explained with detailed examples in later sections. 2.2. Choose your program You have probably chosen the package you want to create. The     first thing you need to do is check if the package is in the distribution archive already by using the following: * the aptitude command     * the Debian packages web page * the Debian Package Tracker web page If the package already exists, well, install it! :-) If it happens to be orphaned (that is, if its maintainer is set to     Debian QA Group), you may be able to pick it up if it's still available. You may also adopt a package whose maintainer has filed a Request for Adoption (RFA).^[6]     There are several package ownership status resources: * The wnpp-alert command from the devscripts package * Work-Needing and Prospective Packages     * Debian Bug report logs: Bugs in pseudo-package wnpp in unstable * Debian Packages that Need Lovin' * Browse wnpp bugs based on debtags As a side note, it's important to point out that Debian already has packages for most kinds of programs, and the number of packages already in the Debian archive is much larger than that     of contributors with upload rights. Thus, contributions to packages already in the archive are far more appreciated (and more likely to receive sponsorship) by other developers ^[7]. You can contribute in various ways: * taking over orphaned, yet actively used, packages * joining packaging teams     * triaging bugs of very popular packages * preparing QA or NMU uploads If you are able to adopt the package, get the sources (with something like apt-get source packagename) and examine them. This document unfortunately doesn't include comprehensive information     about adopting packages. Thankfully you shouldn't have a hard time figuring out how the package works since someone has already done the initial setup for you. Keep reading, though; a lot of the advice below will still be applicable to your case.     If the package is new, and you decide you'd like to see it in Debian, proceed as follows: * First, you must know that the program works, and have tried it for some time to confirm its usefulness. * You must check that no one else is already working on the package on the Work-Needing and Prospective Packages site. If no one else is working on it, file an ITP (Intent To Package) bug report to the wnpp pseudo-package using reportbug. If someone's already on it, contact them if you feel you need to. If not — find another interesting program that nobody is maintaining. * The software must have a license. + For the main section, Debian Policy requires it to be fully compliant with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) and not to require a package outside of main for compilation or execution. This is the desired case. + For the contrib section, it must comply with the DFSG but it may require a package outside of main for compilation or execution. + For the non-free section, it may be non-compliant with     the DFSG but it must be distributable. + If you are unsure about where it should go, post the license text on debian-legal@lists.debian.org and ask for advice. * The program should not introduce security and maintenance concerns into the Debian system. + The program should be well documented and its code needs to be understandable (i.e., not obfuscated). + You should contact the program's author(s) to check if they agree with packaging it and are amicable to Debian. It is important to be able to consult with the author(s) in case of any problems with the program, so don't try to package unmaintained software. + The program certainly should not run setuid root, or even better, it shouldn't need to be setuid or setgid to anything. + The program should not be a daemon, or go in an */sbin directory, or open a port as root. Of course, the last one is just a safety measure, and is intended     to save you from enraging users if you do something wrong in some setuid daemon… When you gain more experience in packaging, you'll be able to package such software. As a new maintainer, you are encouraged to get some experience in     packaging with easier packages and discouraged from creating complicated packages. * Simple packages + single binary package, arch = all (collection of data such as wallpaper graphics) + single binary package, arch = all (executables written in an interpreted language such as POSIX shell) * Intermediate complexity packages + single binary package, arch = any (ELF binary executables compiled from languages such as C and C++) + multiple binary packages, arch = any + all (packages for ELF binary executables + documentation) + upstream source in a format other than tar.gz or tar.bz2     + upstream source containing undistributable contents * High complexity packages + interpreter module package used by other packages + generic ELF library package used by other packages + multiple binary packages including an ELF library package + source package with multiple upstream sources + kernel module packages + kernel patch packages + any package with non-trivial maintainer scripts Packaging high complexity packages is not too hard, but it     requires a bit more knowledge. You should seek specific guidance for every complex feature. For example, some languages have their own sub-policy documents: * Perl policy     * Python policy * Java policy There is another old Latin saying: fabricando fit faber (practice makes perfect). It is highly recommended to practice and     experiment with all the steps of Debian packaging with simple packages while reading this tutorial. A trivial upstream tarball, hello-sh-1.0.tar.gz, created as follows may offer a good starting point:^[8] $ mkdir -p hello-sh/hello-sh-1.0; cd hello-sh/hello-sh-1.0 $ cat > hello < autoreconf -+-> configure Makefile.am -----+ | +-> Makefile.in src/Makefile.am -+ | +-> src/Makefile.in     | +-> config.h.in automake aclocal aclocal.m4 autoheader Editing configure.ac and Makefile.am files requires some     knowledge of autoconf and automake. See info autoconf and info automake. The second step of the Autotools workflow is usually that the     user obtains this distributed source and runs ./configure && make in the source directory to compile the program into an executable command binary. Makefile.in -----+ +-> Makefile -----+-> make -> binary src/Makefile.in -+-> ./configure -+-> src/Makefile -+     config.h.in -----+ +-> config.h -----+ | config.status -+ config.guess --+ You can change many things in the Makefile; for instance you can     change the default location for file installation using the option ./configure --prefix=/usr. Although it is not required, updating the configure and other     files with autoreconf -i -f may improve the compatibility of the source. ^[13]     CMake is an alternative build system. You can recognize such sources by the CMakeLists.txt file. 2.6. Package name and version If the upstream source comes as gentoo-0.9.12.tar.gz, you can     take gentoo as the (source) package name and 0.9.12 as the upstream version. These are used in the debian/changelog file described later in Section 4.3, “changelog”, too. Although this simple approach works most of the time, you may     need to adjust package name and upstream version by renaming the upstream source to follow Debian Policy and existing convention. You must choose the package name to consist only of lower case letters (a-z), digits (0-9), plus (+) and minus (-) signs, and     periods (.). It must be at least two characters long, must start with an alphanumeric character, and must not be the same as existing packages. It is a good idea to keep its length within 30 characters. ^[14] If upstream uses some generic term such as test-suite for its     name, it is a good idea to rename it to identify its contents explicitly and avoid namespace pollution. ^[15] You should choose the upstream version to consist only of     alphanumerics (0-9A-Za-z), plus signs (+), tildes (~), and periods (.). It must start with a digit (0-9). ^[16] It is good idea to keep its length within 8 characters if possible. ^[17] If upstream does not use a normal versioning scheme such as 2.30.32 but uses some kind of date such as 11Apr29, a random codename string, or a VCS hash value as part of the version, make sure to remove them from the upstream version. Such information can be recorded in the debian/changelog file. If you need to     invent a version string, use the YYYYMMDD format such as 20110429 as upstream version. This ensures that dpkg interprets later versions correctly as upgrades. If you need to ensure smooth transition to the normal version scheme such as 0.1 in the future, use the 0~YYMMDD format such as 0~110429 as the upstream version.     Version strings ^[18] can be compared using dpkg(1) as follows:     $ dpkg --compare-versions ver1 op ver2     The version comparison rule can be summarized as: * Strings are compared from the head to the tail. * Letters are larger than digits. * Numbers are compared as integers.     * Letters are compared in ASCII code order. * There are special rules for period (.), plus (+), and tilde (~) characters, as follows: 0.0 < 0.5 < 0.10 < 0.99 < 1 < 1.0~rc1 < 1.0 < 1.0+b1 < 1.0+nmu1 < 1.1 < 2.0 One tricky case occurs when upstream releases gentoo-0.9.12-ReleaseCandidate-99.tar.gz as the pre-release of     gentoo-0.9.12.tar.gz. You need to make sure that the upgrade works properly by renaming the upstream source to gentoo-0.9.12~rc99.tar.gz. 2.7. Setting up dh_make Set up the shell environment variables $DEBEMAIL and $DEBFULLNAME     so that various Debian maintenance tools recognize your email address and name to use for packages. ^[19] $ cat >>~/.bashrc < 5 Build-Depends: debhelper (>=10) 6 Standards-Version: 4.0.0     7 Homepage: 8 9 Package: gentoo 10 Architecture: any 11 Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends} 12 Description: 13     (I've added the line numbers.)     Lines 1–7 are the control information for the source package. Lines 9–13 are the control information for the binary package.     Line 1 is the name of the source package.     Line 2 is the section of the distribution the source package goes into. As you may have noticed, the Debian archive is divided into multiple areas: main (the free software), non-free (the not really free software) and contrib (free software that depends on non-free software). Each of these is divided into sections that     classify packages into rough categories. So we have admin for administrator-only programs, devel for programmer tools, doc for documentation, libs for libraries, mail for email readers and daemons, net for network apps and daemons, x11 for X11 programs that don't fit anywhere else, and many more. ^[28]     Let's change it then to x11. (A main/ prefix is implied so we can omit it.)     Line 3 describes how important it is that the user installs this package. ^[29] * The optional priority will usually work for new packages that     do not conflict with others claiming required, important, or standard priority. Section and priority are used by front-ends like aptitude when they sort packages and select defaults. Once you upload the     package to Debian, the value of these two fields can be overridden by the archive maintainers, in which case you will be notified by email.     As this is a normal priority package and doesn't conflict with anything else, we will change the priority to optional. Line 4 is the name and email address of the maintainer. Make sure that this field includes a valid To header for email, because     after you upload it, the bug tracking system will use it to deliver bug emails to you. Avoid using commas, ampersands, or parentheses. Line 5 includes the list of packages required to build your package as the Build-Depends field. You can also have the Build-Depends-Indep field as an additional line here. ^[30] Some packages like gcc and make which are required by the     build-essential package are implied. If you need to have other tools to build your package, you should add them to these fields. Multiple entries are separated with commas; read on for the explanation of binary package dependencies to find out more about the syntax of these lines. * For all packages packaged with the dh command in the debian/ rules file, you must have debhelper (>=9) in the Build-Depends field to satisfy the Debian Policy requirement for the clean target. * Source packages which have binary packages with Architecture: any are rebuilt by the autobuilder. Since this autobuilder procedure installs only the packages listed in the     Build-Depends field before running debian/rules build (see Section 6.2, “Autobuilder”), the Build-Depends field needs to list practically all the required packages, and Build-Depends-Indep is rarely used. * For source packages with binary packages all of which are Architecture: all, the Build-Depends-Indep field may list all the required packages unless they are already listed in the Build-Depends field to satisfy the Debian Policy requirement for the clean target.     If you are not sure which one should be used, use the Build-Depends field to be on the safe side. ^[31]     To find out what packages your package needs to be built run the command:     $ dpkg-depcheck -d ./configure     To manually find exact build dependencies for /usr/bin/foo, execute     $ objdump -p /usr/bin/foo | grep NEEDED     and for each library listed (e.g., libfoo.so.6), execute     $ dpkg -S libfoo.so.6 Then just take the -dev version of every package as a     Build-Depends entry. If you use ldd for this purpose, it will report indirect lib dependencies as well, resulting in the problem of excessive build dependencies. gentoo also happens to require xlibs-dev, libgtk1.2-dev and     libglib1.2-dev to build, so we'll add them here next to debhelper.     Line 6 is the version of the Debian Policy Manual standards this package follows, the one you read while making your package.     On line 7 you can put the URL of the software's upstream homepage. Line 9 is the name of the binary package. This is usually the     same as the name of the source package, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Line 10 describes the architectures the binary package can be     compiled for. This value is usually one of the following depending on the type of the binary package: ^[32] * Architecture: any + The generated binary package is an architecture dependent one usually in a compiled language.     * Architecture: all + The generated binary package is an architecture independent one usually consisting of text, images, or scripts in an interpreted language. We leave line 10 as is since this is written in C.     dpkg-gencontrol(1) will fill in the appropriate architecture value for any machine this source package gets compiled on. If your package is architecture independent (for example, a shell     or Perl script, or a document), change this to all, and read later in Section 4.4, “rules” about using the binary-indep rule instead of binary-arch for building the package. Line 11 shows one of the most powerful features of the Debian packaging system. Packages can relate to each other in various     ways. Apart from Depends, other relationship fields are Recommends, Suggests, Pre-Depends, Breaks, Conflicts, Provides, and Replaces. The package management tools usually behave the same way when     dealing with these relations; if not, it will be explained. (See dpkg(8), dselect(8), apt(8), aptitude(1), etc.)     Here is a simplified description of package relationships: ^[33] * Depends The package will not be installed unless the packages it depends on are installed. Use this if your program absolutely will not run (or will cause severe breakage) unless a particular package is present. * Recommends Use this for packages that are not strictly necessary but are typically used with your program. When a user installs your program, all front-ends will probably prompt them to install the recommended packages. aptitude and apt-get install recommended packages along with your package by default (but the user can disable this behavior). dpkg will ignore this field. * Suggests Use this for packages which will work nicely with your program but are not at all necessary. When a user installs your program, they will probably not be prompted to install suggested packages. aptitude can be configured to install suggested packages along with your package but this is not its default. dpkg and apt-get will ignore this field. * Pre-Depends This is stronger than Depends. The package will not be installed unless the packages it pre-depends on are installed and correctly configured. Use this very sparingly and only     after discussing it on the debian-devel@lists.debian.org mailing list. Read: don't use it at all. :-) * Conflicts The package will not be installed until all the packages it conflicts with have been removed. Use this if your program absolutely will not run or will cause severe problems if a particular package is present. * Breaks When installed the package will break all the listed packages. Normally a Breaks entry specifies that it applies to versions earlier than a certain value. The resolution is generally to use higher-level package management tools to upgrade the listed packages. * Provides For some types of packages where there are multiple alternatives, virtual names have been defined. You can get the full list in the virtual-package-names-list.txt.gz file. Use this if your program provides a function of an existing virtual package. * Replaces Use this when your program replaces files from another package, or completely replaces another package (used in conjunction with Conflicts). Files from the named packages will be overwritten with the files from your package. All these fields have uniform syntax. They are a list of package     names separated by commas. These package names may also be lists of alternative package names, separated by vertical bar symbols | (pipe symbols). The fields may restrict their applicability to particular versions of each named package. The restriction of each individual package is listed in parentheses after its name, and     should contain a relation from the list below followed by a version number value. The relations allowed are: <<, <=, =, >=, and >> for strictly lower, lower or equal, exactly equal, greater or equal, and strictly greater, respectively. For example, Depends: foo (>= 1.2), libbar1 (= 1.3.4) Conflicts: baz     Recommends: libbaz4 (>> 4.0.7) Suggests: quux Replaces: quux (<< 5), quux-foo (<= 7.6)     The last feature you need to know about is ${shlibs:Depends}, $ {perl:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}, etc. dh_shlibdeps(1) calculates shared library dependencies for binary     packages. It generates a list of ELF executables and shared libraries it has found for each binary package. This list is used for substituting ${shlibs:Depends}. dh_perl(1) calculates Perl dependencies. It generates a list of a     dependencies on perl or perlapi for each binary package. This list is used for substituting ${perl:Depends}. Some debhelper commands may cause the generated package to depend     on some additional packages. All such commands generate a list of required packages for each binary package. This list is used for substituting ${misc:Depends}. dh_gencontrol(1) generates DEBIAN/control for each binary package     while substituting ${shlibs:Depends}, ${perl:Depends}, $ {misc:Depends}, etc. Having said all that, we can leave the Depends field exactly as     it is now, and insert another line after it saying Suggests: file, because gentoo can use some features provided by the file package.     Line 9 is the Homepage URL. Let's assume this to be at http:// www.obsession.se/gentoo/. Line 12 is the short description. Terminals are conventionally 80     columns wide so this shouldn't be longer than about 60 characters. I'll change it to fully GUI-configurable, two-pane X file manager. Line 13 is where the long description goes. This should be a paragraph which gives more details about the package. Column 1 of     each line should be empty. There must be no blank lines, but you can put a single . (dot) in a column to simulate that. Also, there must be no more than one blank line after the long description. ^[34] We can insert Vcs-* fields to document the Version Control System     (VCS) location between lines 6 and 7. ^[35] Let's assume that the gentoo package has its VCS located in the Debian Alioth Git Service at git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/gentoo.git.     Finally, here is the updated control file: 1 Source: gentoo 2 Section: x11 3 Priority: optional 4 Maintainer: Josip Rodin 5 Build-Depends: debhelper (>=10), xlibs-dev, libgtk1.2-dev, libglib1.2-dev 6 Standards-Version: 4.0.0 7 Vcs-Git: https://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/gentoo.git 8 Vcs-browser: https://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/gentoo.git 9 Homepage: http://www.obsession.se/gentoo/ 10 11 Package: gentoo 12 Architecture: any 13 Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}     14 Suggests: file 15 Description: fully GUI-configurable, two-pane X file manager 16 gentoo is a two-pane file manager for the X Window System. gentoo lets the 17 user do (almost) all of the configuration and customizing from within the 18 program itself. If you still prefer to hand-edit configuration files, 19 they're fairly easy to work with since they are written in an XML format. 20 . 21 gentoo features a fairly complex and powerful file identification system, 22 coupled to an object-oriented style system, which together give you a lot 23 of control over how files of different types are displayed and acted upon. 24 Additionally, over a hundred pixmap images are available for use in file 25 type descriptions. 26 . 29 gentoo was written from scratch in ANSI C, and it utilizes the GTK+ toolkit 30 for its interface.     (I've added the line numbers.) 4.2. copyright This file contains information about the copyright and license of     the upstream sources. Debian Policy Manual, 12.5 "Copyright information" dictates its content and DEP-5: Machine-parseable debian/copyright provides guidelines for its format. dh_make can give you a template copyright file. Let's use the     --copyright gpl2 option here to get a template file for the gentoo package released under GPL-2. You must fill in missing information to complete this file, such as the place you got the package from, the actual copyright notice, and the license. For certain common free software licenses (GNU GPL-1, GNU GPL-2, GNU GPL-3, LGPL-2, LGPL-2.1,     LGPL-3, GNU FDL-1.2, GNU FDL-1.3, Apache-2.0, 3-Clause BSD, CC0-1.0, MPL-1.1, MPL-2.0 or the Artistic license), you can just refer to the appropriate file in the /usr/share/common-licenses/ directory that exists on every Debian system. Otherwise, you must include the complete license.     In short, here's what gentoo's copyright file should look like: 1 Format: https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/ 2 Upstream-Name: gentoo 3 Upstream-Contact: Emil Brink 4 Source: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gentoo/files/ 5 6 Files: * 7 Copyright: 1998-2010 Emil Brink 8 License: GPL-2+ 9 10 Files: icons/* 11 Copyright: 1998 Johan Hanson 12 License: GPL-2+ 13 14 Files: debian/* 15 Copyright: 1998-2010 Josip Rodin 16 License: GPL-2+ 17     18 License: GPL-2+ 19 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify 20 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by 21 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or 22 (at your option) any later version. 23 . 24 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 25 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 26 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the 27 GNU General Public License for more details. 28 . 29 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along 30 with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 31 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA. 32 . 33 On Debian systems, the full text of the GNU General Public 34 License version 2 can be found in the file 35 '/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2'.     (I've added the line numbers.) Please follow the HOWTO provided by the ftpmasters and sent to     debian-devel-announce: http://lists.debian.org/ debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00023.html. 4.3. changelog This is a required file, which has a special format described in     Debian Policy Manual, 4.4 "debian/changelog". This format is used by dpkg and other programs to obtain the version number, revision, distribution, and urgency of your package. For you, it is also important, since it is good to have documented all changes you have done. It will help people     downloading your package to see whether there are issues with the package that they should know about. It will be saved as /usr/ share/doc/gentoo/changelog.Debian.gz in the binary package.     dh_make created a default one, and this is what it looks like: 1 gentoo (0.9.12-1) unstable; urgency=medium 2     3 * Initial release. (Closes: #nnnn) 4 5 -- Josip Rodin Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:37:31 +0100 6     (I've added the line numbers.) Line 1 is the package name, version, distribution, and urgency.     The name must match the source package name; distribution should be unstable, and urgency should be set to medium unless there is any particular reason for other values. Lines 3-5 are a log entry, where you document changes made in this package revision (not the upstream changes — there is a special file for that purpose, created by the upstream authors, which you will later install as /usr/share/doc/gentoo/     changelog.gz). Let's assume your ITP (Intent To Package) bug report number was 12345. New lines must be inserted just below the uppermost line that begins with * (asterisk). You can do it with dch(1). You can edit this manually with a text editor as long as you follow the formatting convention used by the dch(1). In order to prevent a package being accidentally uploaded before     completing the package, it is a good idea to change the distribution value to an invalid distribution value of UNRELEASED.     You will end up with something like this: 1 gentoo (0.9.12-1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low 2 3 * Initial Release. Closes: #12345     4 * This is my first Debian package. 5 * Adjusted the Makefile to fix $(DESTDIR) problems. 6 7 -- Josip Rodin Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:37:31 +0100 8     (I've added the line numbers.) Once you are satisfied with all the changes and documented them     in changelog, you should change the distribution value from UNRELEASED to the target distribution value unstable (or even experimental). ^[36]     You can read more about updating the changelog file later in Chapter 8, Updating the package. 4.4. rules Now we need to take a look at the exact rules that dpkg-buildpackage(1) will use to actually create the package.     This file is in fact another Makefile, but different from the one (s) in the upstream source. Unlike other files in debian, this one is marked as executable. 4.4.1. Targets of the rules file Every rules file, like any other Makefile, consists of several rules, each of which defines a target and how it is carried out. ^[37] A new rule begins with its target declaration in the first     column. The following lines beginning with the TAB code (ASCII 9) specify the recipe for carrying out that target. Empty lines and lines beginning with # (hash) are treated as comments and ignored. ^[38] A rule that you want to execute is invoked by its target name as     a command line argument. For example, debian/rules build and fakeroot make -f debian/rules binary execute rules for build and binary targets, respectively.     Here is a simplified explanation of the targets: * clean target: to clean all compiled, generated, and useless files in the build-tree. (Required) * build target: to build the source into compiled programs and formatted documents in the build-tree. (Required) * build-arch target: to build the source into arch-dependent compiled programs in the build-tree. (Required) * build-indep target: to build the source into arch-independent formatted documents in the build-tree. (Required) * install target: to install files into a file tree for each binary package under the debian directory. If defined,     binary* targets effectively depend on this target. (Optional) * binary target: to create all binary packages (effectively a combination of binary-arch and binary-indep targets). (Required)^[39] * binary-arch target: to create arch-dependent (Architecture: any) binary packages in the parent directory. (Required)^[40] * binary-indep target: to create arch-independent (Architecture: all) binary packages in the parent directory. (Required)^[41] * get-orig-source target: to obtain the most recent version of the original source package from an upstream archive. (Optional) You are probably overwhelmed by now, but things are much simpler     upon examination of the rules file that dh_make gives us as a default. 4.4.2. Default rules file     Newer dh_make generates a very simple but powerful default rules file using the dh command: 1 #!/usr/bin/make -f 2 # See debhelper(7) (uncomment to enable) 3 # output every command that modifies files on the build system. 4 #DH_VERBOSE = 1 5 6 # see FEATURE AREAS in dpkg-buildflags(1) 7 #export DEB_BUILD_MAINT_OPTIONS = hardening=+all 8     9 # see ENVIRONMENT in dpkg-buildflags(1) 10 # package maintainers to append CFLAGS 11 #export DEB_CFLAGS_MAINT_APPEND = -Wall -pedantic 12 # package maintainers to append LDFLAGS 13 #export DEB_LDFLAGS_MAINT_APPEND = -Wl,--as-needed 14 15 16 %: 17 dh $@     (I've added the line numbers and trimmed some comments. In the actual rules file, the leading spaces are a TAB code.) You are probably familiar with lines like line 1 from shell and     Perl scripts. It tells the operating system that this file is to be processed with /usr/bin/make. Line 4 can be uncommented to set the DH_VERBOSE variable to 1, so that the dh command outputs which dh_* commands it is executing. You can also add a line export DH_OPTIONS=-v here, so that each     dh_* command outputs which commands it is executing. This helps you to understand exactly what is going on behind this simple rules file and to debug its problems. This new dh is designed to form a core part of the debhelper tools, and not to hide anything from you. Lines 16 and 17 are where all the work is done with an implicit rule using the pattern rule. The percent sign means "any     targets", which then call a single program, dh, with the target name. ^[42] The dh command is a wrapper script that runs appropriate sequences of dh_* programs depending on its argument. ^[43] * debian/rules clean runs dh clean, which in turn runs the following: dh_testdir dh_auto_clean dh_clean * debian/rules build runs dh build, which in turn runs the following: dh_testdir dh_auto_configure dh_auto_build dh_auto_test * fakeroot debian/rules binary runs fakeroot dh binary, which in turn runs the following^[44]: dh_testroot dh_prep dh_installdirs dh_auto_install dh_install dh_installdocs dh_installchangelogs dh_installexamples dh_installman dh_installcatalogs dh_installcron dh_installdebconf dh_installemacsen dh_installifupdown dh_installinfo dh_installinit     dh_installmenu dh_installmime dh_installmodules dh_installlogcheck dh_installlogrotate dh_installpam dh_installppp dh_installudev dh_installwm dh_installxfonts dh_bugfiles dh_lintian dh_gconf dh_icons dh_perl dh_usrlocal dh_link dh_compress dh_fixperms dh_strip dh_makeshlibs dh_shlibdeps dh_installdeb dh_gencontrol dh_md5sums dh_builddeb * fakeroot debian/rules binary-arch runs fakeroot dh binary-arch, which in turn runs the same sequence as fakeroot dh binary but with the -a option appended for each command. * fakeroot debian/rules binary-indep runs fakeroot dh binary-indep, which in turn runs almost the same sequence as fakeroot dh binary but excluding dh_strip, dh_makeshlibs, and dh_shlibdeps with the -i option appended for each remaining command. The functions of dh_* commands are largely self-evident from     their names. ^[45] There are a few notable ones that are worth giving (over)simplified explanations here assuming a typical build environment based on a Makefile: ^[46] * dh_auto_clean usually executes the following if a Makefile exists with the distclean target. ^[47] make distclean * dh_auto_configure usually executes the following if ./configure exists (arguments abbreviated for readability). ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var ... * dh_auto_build usually executes the following to execute the first target of Makefile if it exists.     make * dh_auto_test usually executes the following if a Makefile exists with the test target. ^[48] make test * dh_auto_install usually executes the following if a Makefile exists with the install target (line folded for readability). make install \ DESTDIR=/path/to/package_version-revision/debian/package All targets which require the fakeroot command will contain     dh_testroot, which exits with an error if you are not using this command to pretend to be root. The important part to know about the rules file created by     dh_make is that it is just a suggestion. It will work for most packages but for more complicated ones, don't be afraid to customize it to fit your needs. Although install is not a required target, it is supported.     fakeroot dh install behaves like fakeroot dh binary but stops after dh_fixperms. 4.4.3. Customization of rules file     There are many ways to customize the rules file created with the new dh command.     The dh $@ command can be customized as follows: ^[49] * Add support for the dh_python2 command. (The best choice for Python.) ^[50] + Include the python package in Build-Depends. + Use dh $@ --with python2. + This handles Python modules using the python framework. * Add support for the dh_pysupport command. (deprecated) + Include the python-support package in Build-Depends. + Use dh $@ --with pysupport. + This handles Python modules using the python-support framework. * Add support for the dh_pycentral command. (deprecated) + Include the python-central package in Build-Depends. + Use dh $@ --with python-central instead. + This also deactivates the dh_pysupport command. + This handles Python modules using the python-central framework. * Add support for the dh_installtex command. + Include the tex-common package in Build-Depends. + Use dh $@ --with tex instead. + This registers Type 1 fonts, hyphenation patterns, and formats with TeX. * Add support for the dh_quilt_patch and dh_quilt_unpatch commands. + Include the quilt package in Build-Depends. + Use dh $@ --with quilt instead. + This applies and un-applies patches to the upstream source from files in the debian/patches directory for a source package in the 1.0 format.     + This is not needed if you use the new 3.0 (quilt) source package format. * Add support for the dh_dkms command. + Include the dkms package in Build-Depends. + Use dh $@ --with dkms instead. + This correctly handles DKMS usage by kernel module packages. * Add support for the dh_autotools-dev_updateconfig and dh_autotools-dev_restoreconfig commands. + Include the autotools-dev package in Build-Depends. + Use dh $@ --with autotools-dev instead. + This updates and restores config.sub and config.guess. * Add support for the dh_autoreconf and dh_autoreconf_clean commands. + Include the dh-autoreconf package in Build-Depends. + Use dh $@ --with autoreconf instead. + This updates the GNU Build System files and restores them after the build. * Add support for the dh_girepository command. + Includes the gobject-introspection package in Build-Depends. + Use dh $@ --with gir instead. + This computes dependencies for packages shipping GObject introspection data and generates the ${gir:Depends} substitution variable for the package dependency. * Add support for the bash completion feature. + Includes the bash-completion package in Build-Depends. + Use dh $@ --with bash-completion instead. + This installs bash completions using a configuration file at debian/package.bash-completion. Many dh_* commands invoked by the new dh command can be customized by the corresponding configuration files in the debian     directory. See Chapter 5, Other files under the debian directory and the manpage of each command for the customization of such features. You may need to run dh_* commands invoked via the new dh with added arguments, or to run additional commands with them, or to     skip them. For such cases, you create an override_dh_foo target with its rule in the rules file defining an override_dh_foo target for the dh_foo command you want to change. It basically says run me instead. ^[51] Please note that the dh_auto_* commands tend to do more than what has been discussed in this (over)simplified explanation to take     care of all the corner cases. It is a bad idea to use override_dh_* targets to substitute simplified equivalent commands (except for the override_dh_auto_clean target) since it may bypass such smart debhelper features. So, for instance, if you want to store system configuration data in the /etc/gentoo directory instead of the usual /etc directory     for the recent gentoo package using Autotools, you can override the default --sysconfig=/etc argument given by the dh_auto_configure command to the ./configure command by the following:     override_dh_auto_configure: dh_auto_configure -- --sysconfig=/etc/gentoo The arguments given after -- are appended to the default arguments of the auto-executed program to override them. Using     the dh_auto_configure command is better than directly invoking the ./configure command here since it will only override the --sysconfig argument and retain any other, benign arguments to the ./configure command. If the Makefile in the source for gentoo requires you to specify     build as its target to build it ^[52], you create an override_dh_auto_build target to enable this.     override_dh_auto_build: dh_auto_build -- build     This ensures $(MAKE) is run with all the default arguments given by the dh_auto_build command plus the build argument. If the Makefile in the source for gentoo requires you to specify     the packageclean target to clean it for the Debian package instead of using distclean or clean targets, you can create an override_dh_auto_clean target to enable it.     override_dh_auto_clean: $(MAKE) packageclean If the Makefile in the source for gentoo contains a test target     which you do not want to run for the Debian package building process, you can use an empty override_dh_auto_test target to skip it.     override_dh_auto_test: If gentoo has an unusual upstream changelog file called FIXES,     dh_installchangelogs will not install that file by default. The dh_installchangelogs command requires FIXES as its argument to install it. ^[53]     override_dh_installchangelogs: dh_installchangelogs FIXES When you use the new dh command, use of explicit targets such as the ones listed in Section 4.4.1, “Targets of the rules file”,     other than the get-orig-source target, may make it difficult to understand their exact effects. Please limit explicit targets to override_dh_* targets and completely independent ones, if possible. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ^[27] In this chapter, files in the debian directory are referred     to without the leading debian/ for simplicity whenever the meaning is obvious.     ^[28] See Debian Policy Manual, 2.4 "Sections" and List of sections in sid.     ^[29] See Debian Policy Manual, 2.5 "Priorities". ^[30] See Debian Policy Manual, 7.7 "Relationships between source     and binary packages - Build-Depends, Build-Depends-Indep, Build-Conflicts, Build-Conflicts-Indep". ^[31] This somewhat strange situation is a feature well documented in the Debian Policy Manual, Footnotes 55. This is not     due to the use of the dh command in the debian/rules file but due to how the dpkg-buildpackage works. The same situation applies to the auto build system for Ubuntu.     ^[32] See Debian Policy Manual, 5.6.8 "Architecture" for exact details.     ^[33] See Debian Policy Manual, 7 "Declaring relationships between packages". ^[34] These descriptions are in English. Translations of these     descriptions are provided by The Debian Description Translation Project - DDTP.     ^[35] See Debian Developer's Reference, 6.2.5. "Version Control System location". ^[36] If you use the dch -r command to make this last change,     please make sure to save the changelog file explicitly by the editor. ^[37] You can start learning how to write a Makefile from Debian     Reference, 12.2. "Make". The full documentation is available as http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/index.html or as the make-doc package in the non-free archive area.     ^[38] Debian Policy Manual, 4.9 "Main building script: debian/ rules" explains the details.     ^[39] This target is used by dpkg-buildpackage as in Section 6.1, “Complete (re)build”.     ^[40] This target is used by dpkg-buildpackage -B as in Section 6.2, “Autobuilder”.     ^[41] This target is used by dpkg-buildpackage -A. ^[42] This uses the new debhelper v7+ features. Its design concepts are explained in Not Your Grandpa's Debhelper presented at DebConf9 by the debhelper upstream. Under lenny, dh_make created a much more complicated rules file with explicit rules and many dh_* scripts listed for each one, most of which are now     unnecessary (and show the package's age). The new dh command is simpler and frees us from doing the routine work "manually". You still have full power to customize the process with override_dh_* targets. See Section 4.4.3, “Customization of rules file”. It is based only on the debhelper package and does not obfuscate the package building process as the cdbs package tends to do. ^[43] You can verify the actual sequences of dh_* programs     invoked for a given target without really running them by invoking dh target --no-act or debian/rules -- 'target --no-act'. ^[44] The following example assumes your debian/compat has a     value equal or more than 9 to avoid invoking any python support commands automatically. ^[45] For complete information on what all these dh_* scripts do     exactly, and what their other options are, please read their respective manual pages and the debhelper documentation. ^[46] These commands support other build environments, such as     setup.py, which can be listed by executing dh_auto_build --list in a package source directory. ^[47] It actually looks for the first available target in the     Makefile out of distclean, realclean, or clean, and executes that.     ^[48] It actually looks for the first available target in the Makefile out of test or check, and executes that. ^[49] If a package installs the /usr/share/perl5/Debian/Debhelper     /Sequence/custom_name.pm file, you should activate its customization function by dh $@ --with custom-name. ^[50] Use of the dh_python2 command is preferred over use of     dh_pysupport or dh_pycentral commands. Do not use the dh_python command. ^[51] Under lenny, if you wanted to change the behavior of a dh_*     script you found the relevant line in the rules file and adjusted it.     ^[52] dh_auto_build without any arguments will execute the first target in the Makefile. ^[53] The debian/changelog and debian/NEWS files are always     automatically installed. The upstream changelog is found by converting filenames to lower case and matching them against changelog, changes, changelog.txt, and changes.txt. Chapter 5. Other files under the debian directory The dh_make command had major updates since this old document was     written. So some parts of this document aren't applicable any more. The rewrite of this tutorial document with updated contents and     more practical examples is available as Guide for Debian Maintainers. Please use this new tutorial as the primary tutorial document.     The debmake command is used in place of the dh_make command in my new Guide for Debian Maintainers. To control most of what debhelper does while building the package, you put optional configuration files under the debian     directory. This chapter will provide an overview of what each of these does and its format. Please read the Debian Policy Manual and Debian Developer's Reference for guidelines for packaging.     The dh_make command will create some template configuration files under the debian directory. Take a look at all of them. In this chapter, files in the debian directory are referred to     without the leading debian/ for simplicity whenever the meaning is obvious. Some template configuration files for debhelper may not be     created by the dh_make command. In such cases, you need to create them with an editor.     If you wish or need to activate any of these, please do the following: * rename the configuration files to use the actual binary package name in place of package; * modify template file contents to suit your needs;     * remove template files which you do not need; * modify the control file (see Section 4.1, “control”), if necessary; * modify the rules file (see Section 4.4, “rules”), if necessary. Any debhelper configuration files without a package prefix, such as install, apply to the first binary package. When there are     many binary packages, their configurations can be specified by prefixing their name to their configuration filenames such as package-1.install, package-2.install, etc. 5.1. README.Debian     Any extra details or discrepancies between the original package and your Debian version should be documented here.     dh_make created a default one; this is what it looks like: gentoo for Debian     ----------------- -- Josip Rodin , Wed, 11 Nov 1998 21:02:14 +0100     If you have nothing to be documented, remove this file. See dh_installdocs(1). 5.2. compat     The compat file defines the debhelper compatibility level. Currently, you should set it to the debhelper v10 as follows:     $ echo 10 > debian/compat You may use compat level v9 in certain circumstances for     compatibility with older systems. However, using any level below v9 is not recommended and should be avoided for new packages. 5.3. conffiles One of the most annoying things about software is when you spend a great deal of time and effort customizing a program, only to     have an upgrade stomp all over your changes. Debian solves this problem by marking such configuration files as conffiles. ^[54] When you upgrade a package, you'll be asked whether you want to keep your old configuration files or not. dh_installdeb(1) automatically flags any files under the /etc directory as conffiles, so if your program only has conffiles     there you do not need to specify them in this file. For most package types, the only place conffiles should ever be is under / etc, and so this file doesn't need to exist. If your program uses configuration files but also rewrites them     on its own, it's best not to make them conffiles because dpkg will then prompt users to verify the changes all the time. If the program you're packaging requires every user to modify the     configuration files in the /etc directory, there are two popular ways to arrange for them to not be conffiles, keeping dpkg quiet: * Create a symlink under the /etc directory pointing to a file under the /var directory generated by the maintainer scripts.     * Create a file generated by the maintainer scripts under the / etc directory.     For information on maintainer scripts, see Section 5.18, “ {pre,post}{inst,rm}”. 5.4. package.cron.* If your package requires regularly scheduled tasks to operate properly, you can use these files to set that up. You can set up     regular tasks that either happen hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, or alternatively happen at any other time that you wish. The filenames are: * package.cron.hourly - Installed as /etc/cron.hourly/package; run once an hour. * package.cron.daily - Installed as /etc/cron.daily/package; run once a day.     * package.cron.weekly - Installed as /etc/cron.weekly/package; run once a week. * package.cron.monthly - Installed as /etc/cron.monthly/package : run once a month. * package.cron.d - Installed as /etc/cron.d/package: for any other time.     Most of these files are shell scripts, with the exception of package.cron.d which follows the format of crontab(5).     No explicit cron.* file is needed to set up log rotation; for that, see dh_installlogrotate(1) and logrotate(8). 5.5. dirs This file specifies any directories which we need but which are     not created by the normal installation procedure (make install DESTDIR=... invoked by dh_auto_install). This generally means there is a problem with the Makefile.     Files listed in an install file don't need their directories created first. See Section 5.11, “install”. It is best to try to run the installation first and only use this     if you run into trouble. There is no preceding slash on the directory names listed in the dirs file. 5.6. package.doc-base If your package has documentation other than manual and info     pages, you should use the doc-base file to register it, so the user can find it with e.g. dhelp(1), dwww(1), or doccentral(1).     This usually includes HTML, PS and PDF files, shipped in /usr/ share/doc/packagename/.     This is what gentoo's doc-base file gentoo.doc-base looks like: Document: gentoo Title: Gentoo Manual Author: Emil Brink     Abstract: This manual describes what Gentoo is, and how it can be used. Section: File Management Format: HTML Index: /usr/share/doc/gentoo/html/index.html Files: /usr/share/doc/gentoo/html/*.html For information on the file format, see install-docs(8) and the     Debian doc-base manual at the local copy /usr/share/doc/doc-base/ doc-base.html/index.html provided by the doc-base package.     For more details on installing additional documentation, look in Section 3.3, “Installation of files to their destination”. 5.7. docs This file specifies the file names of documentation files we can     have dh_installdocs(1) install into the temporary directory for us.     By default, it will include all existing files in the top-level source directory that are called BUGS, README*, TODO etc.     For gentoo, some other files are also included: BUGS CONFIG-CHANGES CREDITS     NEWS README README.gtkrc TODO 5.8. emacsen-*     If your package supplies Emacs files that can be bytecompiled at package installation time, you can use these files to set it up.     They are installed into the temporary directory by dh_installemacsen(1).     If you don't need these, remove them. 5.9. package.examples     The dh_installexamples(1) command installs files and directories listed in this file as example files. 5.10. package.init and package.default If your package is a daemon that needs to be run at system     start-up, you've obviously disregarded my initial recommendation, haven't you? :-)     Please read dh_installinit(1) dh_installsystemd(1) to provide startup script. The package.default file will be installed as /etc/default/ package. This file sets defaults that are sourced by the init     script. This package.default file is most often used to set some default flags or timeouts. If your init script has certain configurable features, you can set them in the package.default file, instead of in the init script itself. If your upstream program provides a file for the init script, you can either use it or not. If you don't use their init script then     create a new one in package.init. However if the upstream init script looks fine and installs in the right place you still need to set up the rc* symlinks. To do this you will need to override dh_installinit in the rules file with the following lines:     override_dh_installinit: dh_installinit --onlyscripts     If you don't need this, remove the files. 5.11. install If there are files that need to be installed into your package but your standard make install won't do it, put the filenames and     destinations into this install file. They are installed by dh_install(1).^[55] You should first check that there is not a more specific tool to use. For example, documents should be in the docs file and not in this one. This install file has one line per file installed, with the name of the file (relative to the top build directory) then a space     then the installation directory (relative to the install directory). One example of where this is used is if a binary src/ bar is left uninstalled; the install file might look like:     src/bar usr/bin     This means when this package is installed, there will be an executable command /usr/bin/bar. Alternatively, this install can have the name of the file only without the installation directory when the relative directory     path does not change. This format is usually used for a large package that splits the output of its build into multiple binary packages using package-1.install, package-2.install, etc. The dh_install command will fall back to looking in debian/tmp     for files, if it doesn't find them in the current directory (or wherever you've told it to look using --sourcedir). 5.12. package.info     If your package has info pages, you should install them using dh_installinfo(1) by listing them in a package.info file. 5.13. package.links If you need to create additional symlinks in package build     directories as package maintainer, you should install them using dh_link(1) by listing their full paths of source and destination files in a package.links file. 5.14. {package.,source/}lintian-overrides If lintian reports an erroneous diagnostic for a case where Debian policy allows exceptions to some rule, you can use package     .lintian-overrides or source/lintian-overrides to quieten it. Please read the Lintian User's Manual (https://lintian.debian.org /manual/index.html) and refrain from abusing this. package.lintian-overrides is for the binary package named package     and is installed into usr/share/lintian/overrides/package by the dh_lintian command.     source/lintian-overrides is for the source package. This is not installed. 5.15. manpage.* Your program(s) should have a manual page. If they don't, you should create them. The dh_make command creates some template     files for manual pages. These need to be copied and edited for each command missing its manual page. Please make sure to remove unused templates. 5.15.1. manpage.1.ex Manual pages are normally written in nroff(1). The manpage.1.ex     template is written in nroff, too. See the man(7) manual page for a brief description of how to edit such a file. The final manual page file name should give the name of the program it is documenting, so we will rename it from manpage to     gentoo. The file name also includes .1 as the first suffix, which means it's a manual page for a user command. Be sure to verify that this section is indeed the correct one. Here's a short list of manual page sections: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ |Section| Description | Notes | |-------+--------------------+----------------------------------| |1 |User commands |Executable commands or scripts | |-------+--------------------+----------------------------------| |2 |System calls |Functions provided by the kernel | |-------+--------------------+----------------------------------| |3 |Library calls |Functions within system libraries | |-------+--------------------+----------------------------------| |4 |Special files |Usually found in /dev |     |-------+--------------------+----------------------------------| |5 |File formats |E.g. /etc/passwd's format | |-------+--------------------+----------------------------------| |6 |Games |Games or other frivolous programs | |-------+--------------------+----------------------------------| |7 |Macro packages |Such as man macros | |-------+--------------------+----------------------------------| |8 |System |Programs typically only run by | | |administration |root | |-------+--------------------+----------------------------------| |9 |Kernel routines |Non-standard calls and internals | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ So gentoo's man page should be called gentoo.1. If there was no     gentoo.1 man page in the original source, you should create it by renaming the manpage.1.ex template to gentoo.1 and editing it using information from the example and from the upstream docs.     You can use the help2man command to generate a man page out of the --help and --version output of each program, too. ^[56] 5.15.2. manpage.sgml.ex If on the other hand you prefer writing SGML instead of nroff,     you can use the manpage.sgml.ex template. If you do this, you have to: * rename the file to something like gentoo.sgml. * install the docbook-to-man package * add docbook-to-man to the Build-Depends line in the control     file * add an override_dh_auto_build target to your rules file: override_dh_auto_build: docbook-to-man debian/gentoo.sgml > debian/gentoo.1 dh_auto_build 5.15.3. manpage.xml.ex     If you prefer XML over SGML, you can use the manpage.xml.ex template. If you do this, you have to: * rename the source file to something like gentoo.1.xml * install the docbook-xsl package and an XSLT processor like xsltproc (recommended) * add the docbook-xsl, docbook-xml, and xsltproc packages to the Build-Depends line in the control file * add an override_dh_auto_build target to your rules file:     override_dh_auto_build: xsltproc --nonet \ --param make.year.ranges 1 \ --param make.single.year.ranges 1 \ --param man.charmap.use.subset 0 \ -o debian/ \ http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/manpages/docbook.xsl\ debian/gentoo.1.xml dh_auto_build 5.16. package.manpages     If your package has manual pages, you should install them using dh_installman(1) by listing them in a package.manpages file.     To install docs/gentoo.1 as a manpage for the gentoo package, create a gentoo.manpages file as follows:     docs/gentoo.1 5.17. NEWS     The dh_installchangelogs(1) command installs this. 5.18. {pre,post}{inst,rm} These postinst, preinst, postrm, and prerm files ^[57] are called     maintainer scripts. They are scripts which are put in the control area of the package and run by dpkg when your package is installed, upgraded, or removed. As a novice maintainer, you should avoid any manual editing of maintainer scripts because they are problematic. For more     information refer to the Debian Policy Manual, 6 "Package maintainer scripts and installation procedure", and take a look at the example files provided by dh_make. If you did not listen to me and have created custom maintainer     scripts for a package, you should make sure to test them not only for install and upgrade but also for remove and purge. Upgrades to the new version should be silent and non-intrusive     (existing users should not notice the upgrade except by discovering that old bugs have been fixed and perhaps that there are new features). When the upgrade is necessarily intrusive (eg., config files scattered through various home directories with totally different structure), you may consider as the last resort switching the     package to a safe fallback state (e.g., disabling a service) and providing the proper documentation required by policy (README.Debian and NEWS.Debian). Don't bother the user with debconf notes invoked from these maintainer scripts for upgrades. The ucf package provides a conffile-like handling infrastructure     to preserve user changes for files that may not be labeled as conffiles such as those managed by the maintainer scripts. This should minimize issues associated with them. These maintainer scripts are among the Debian enhancements that     explain why people choose Debian. You must be very careful not to turn them into a source of annoyance. 5.19. package.symbols Packaging of a library is not easy for a novice maintainer and     should be avoided. Having said it, if your package has libraries, you should have debian/package.symbols files. See Section A.2, “Managing debian/package.symbols”. 5.20. TODO     The dh_installdocs(1) command installs this. 5.21. watch The watch file format is documented in the uscan(1) manpage. The     watch file configures the uscan program (in the devscripts package) to watch the site where you originally got the source. This is also used by the Debian Package Tracker service.     Here are its contents: # watch control file for uscan     version=3 http://sf.net/gentoo/gentoo-(.+)\.tar\.gz debian uupdate Normally with a watch file, the URL at http://sf.net/gentoo is downloaded and searched for links of the form . The basename (just the part after the final /) of each linked URL is     compared against the Perl regular expression pattern (see perlre (1)) gentoo-(.+)\.tar\.gz. Out of the files that match, the one with the greatest version number is downloaded and the uupdate program is run to create an updated source tree. Although this is true for other sites, the SourceForge download service at http://sf.net is an exception. When the watch file has a URL matching the Perl regexp ^http://sf\.net/, the uscan program replaces it with http://qa.debian.org/watch/sf.php/ and     then applies this rule. The URL redirector service at http:// qa.debian.org/ is designed to offer a stable redirect service to the desired file for any watch pattern of the form http://sf.net/ project/tar-name-(.+)\.tar\.gz. This solves issues related to periodically changing SourceForge URLs. If the upstream offers the cryptographic signature of the     tarball, it is recommended to verify its authenticity using the pgpsigurlmangle option as described in uscan(1). 5.22. source/format In the debian/source/format file, there should be a single line     indicating the desired format for the source package (check dpkg-source(1) for an exhaustive list). After squeeze, it should say either: * 3.0 (native) for native Debian packages or     * 3.0 (quilt) for everything else. The newer 3.0 (quilt) source format records modifications in a quilt patch series within debian/patches. Those changes are then automatically applied during extraction of the source package. ^     [58] The Debian modifications are simply stored in a debian.tar.gz archive containing all files under the debian directory. This new format supports inclusion of binary files such as PNG icons by the package maintainer without requiring tricks. ^[59] When dpkg-source extracts a source package in 3.0 (quilt) source     format, it automatically applies all patches listed in debian/ patches/series. You can avoid applying patches at the end of the extraction with the --skip-patches option. 5.23. source/local-options When you want to manage Debian packaging activities under a VCS, you typically create one branch (e.g., upstream) tracking the upstream source and another branch (e.g., typically master for     Git) tracking the Debian package. For the latter, you usually want to have unpatched upstream source with your debian/* files for the Debian packaging to ease merging of the new upstream source. After you build a package, the source is normally left patched. You need to unpatch it manually by running dquilt pop -a before committing to the master branch. You can automate this by adding     the optional debian/source/local-options file containing unapply-patches. This file is not included in the generated source package and changes the local build behavior only. This file may contain abort-on-upstream-changes, too (see dpkg-source (1)).     unapply-patches abort-on-upstream-changes 5.24. source/options The autogenerated files in the source tree can be quite annoying for packaging since they generate meaningless large patch files.     There are custom modules such as dh_autoreconf to ease this problem as described in Section 4.4.3, “Customization of rules file”. You can provide a Perl regular expression to the     --extend-diff-ignore option argument of dpkg-source(1) to ignore changes made to the autogenerated files while creating the source package. As a general solution to address this problem of the autogenerated files, you can store such a dpkg-source option     argument in the source/options file of the source package. The following will skip creating patch files for config.sub, config.guess, and Makefile.     extend-diff-ignore = "(^|/)(config\.sub|config\.guess|Makefile)$" 5.25. patches/* The old 1.0 source format created a single large diff.gz file containing package maintenance files in debian and patch files     for the source. Such a package is a bit cumbersome to inspect and understand for each source tree modification later. This is not so nice. The newer 3.0 (quilt) source format stores patches in debian/ patches/* files using the quilt command. These patches and other package data which are all contained under the debian directory     are packaged as the debian.tar.gz file. Since the dpkg-source command can handle quilt formatted patch data in the 3.0 (quilt) source without the quilt package, it does not need a Build-Depends on quilt. ^[60] The quilt command is explained in quilt(1). It records modifications to the source as a stack of -p1 patch files in the     debian/patches directory and the source tree is untouched outside of the debian directory. The order of these patches is recorded in the debian/patches/series file. You can apply (=push), un-apply (=pop), and refresh patches easily. ^[61]     For Chapter 3, Modifying the source, we created three patches in debian/patches. Since Debian patches are located in debian/patches, please make     sure to set up the dquilt command properly as described in Section 3.1, “Setting up quilt”. When anyone (including yourself) provides a patch foo.patch to     the source later, modifying a 3.0 (quilt) source package is quite simple: $ dpkg-source -x gentoo_0.9.12.dsc $ cd gentoo-0.9.12 $ dquilt import ../foo.patch     $ dquilt push $ dquilt refresh $ dquilt header -e ... describe patch The patches stored in the newer 3.0 (quilt) source format must be     fuzz free. You can ensure this with dquilt pop -a; while dquilt push; do dquilt refresh; done. ---------------------------------------------------------------------     ^[54] See dpkg(1) and Debian Policy Manual, "D.2.5 Conffiles".     ^[55] This replaces the deprecated dh_movefiles(1) command which is configured by the files file. ^[56] Note that help2man's placeholder man page will claim that     more detailed documentation is available in the info system. If the command is missing an info page, you should manually edit the man page created by the help2man command. ^[57] Despite this use of the bash shorthand expression     {pre,post}{inst,rm} to indicate these filenames, you should use pure POSIX syntax for these maintainer scripts for compatibility with dash as the system shell.     ^[58] See DebSrc3.0 for a summary on the switch to the new 3.0 (quilt) and 3.0 (native) source formats. ^[59] Actually, this new format also supports multiple upstream     tarballs and more compression methods. These are beyond the scope of this document. ^[60] Several methods of patch set maintenance have been proposed and are in use for Debian packages. The quilt system is the     preferred maintenance system in use. Others include dpatch, dbs, and cdbs. Many of these keep such patches as debian/patches/* files. ^[61] If you are asking a sponsor to upload your package, this     kind of clear separation and documentation of your changes is very important to expedite the package review by your sponsor. Chapter 6. Building the package The rewrite of this tutorial document with updated contents and     more practical examples is available as Guide for Debian Maintainers. Please use this new tutorial as the primary tutorial document.     We should now be ready to build the package. 6.1. Complete (re)build     In order to perform a complete (re)build of a package properly, you need to make sure you have installed * the build-essential package, * packages listed in the Build-Depends field (see Section 4.1,     “control”), and * packages listed in the Build-Depends-indep field (see Section 4.1, “control”).     Then you issue the following command in the source directory:     $ dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc     This will do everything to make full binary and source packages for you. It will: * clean the source tree (debian/rules clean) * build the source package (dpkg-source -b) * build the program (debian/rules build)     * build binary packages (fakeroot debian/rules binary) * make the .dsc file * make the .changes file, using dpkg-genchanges If the build result is satisfactory, sign the .dsc and .changes     files with your private GPG key using the debsign command. You need to enter your secret pass phrase, twice. ^[62] For a non-native Debian package, e.g., gentoo, you will see the     following files in the parent directory (~/gentoo) after building packages: * gentoo_0.9.12.orig.tar.gz This is the original upstream source code tarball, merely renamed to the above so that it adheres to the Debian standard. Note that this was created initially by the command dh_make -f ../gentoo-0.9.12.tar.gz. * gentoo_0.9.12-1.dsc This is a summary of the contents of the source code. The file is generated from your control file, and is used when unpacking the source with dpkg-source(1). * gentoo_0.9.12-1.debian.tar.gz This compressed tarball contains your debian directory contents. Each and every addition you made to the original source code is stored as a quilt patch in debian/patches. If someone else wants to re-create your package from scratch, they can easily do so using the above three files. The     extraction procedure is trivial: just copy the three files somewhere else and run dpkg-source -x gentoo_0.9.12-1.dsc. ^ [63] * gentoo_0.9.12-1_i386.deb This is your completed binary package. You can use dpkg to install and remove this just like any other package. * gentoo_0.9.12-1_i386.changes This file describes all the changes made in the current package revision; it is used by the Debian FTP archive maintenance programs to install the binary and source packages. It is partly generated from the changelog file and the .dsc file. As you keep working on the package, its behavior will change and new features will be added. People downloading your package can look at this file and quickly see what has changed. Debian archive maintenance programs will also post the contents of this file to the debian-devel-changes@lists.debian.org mailing list. The gentoo_0.9.12-1.dsc and gentoo_0.9.12-1_i386.changes files must be signed using the debsign command with your private GPG     key in the ~/.gnupg/ directory, before uploading them to the Debian FTP archive. The GPG signature provides the proof that these files are really yours, using your public GPG key. The debsign command can be made to sign with your specified     secret GPG key ID (good for sponsoring packages) with the following in the ~/.devscripts file:     DEBSIGN_KEYID=Your_GPG_keyID The long strings of numbers in the .dsc and .changes files are SHA1/SHA256 checksums for the files mentioned. Anyone downloading     your files can test them with sha1sum(1) or sha256sum(1) and if the numbers don't match, they'll know the file is corrupt or has been tampered with. 6.2. Autobuilder Debian supports many ports with the autobuilder network running buildd daemons on computers of many different architectures.     Although you do not need to do this yourself, you should be aware of what will happen to your packages. Let's look into roughly how they rebuild your packages for multiple architectures. ^[64]     For Architecture: any packages, the autobuilder system performs a rebuild. It ensures the installation of * the build-essential package, and     * packages listed in the Build-Depends field (see Section 4.1, “control”).     Then it issues the following command in the source directory:     $ dpkg-buildpackage -B     This will do everything to make architecture dependent binary packages on another architecture. It will: * clean the source tree (debian/rules clean) * build the program (debian/rules build) * build architecture dependent binary packages (fakeroot debian     /rules binary-arch) * sign the source .dsc file, using gpg * create and sign the upload .changes file, using dpkg-genchanges and gpg     This is why you see your package for other architectures. Although packages listed in the Build-Depends-Indep field are required to be installed for our normal packaging work (see Section 6.1, “Complete (re)build”), they are not required to be installed for the autobuilder system since it builds only     architecture dependent binary packages. ^[65] This distinction between normal packaging and autobuilding procedures is what dictates whether you should record such required packages in the Build-Depends or Build-Depends-Indep fields of the debian/control file (see Section 4.1, “control”). 6.3. debuild command You can automate the build activity around executing the     dpkg-buildpackage command package further with the debuild command. See debuild(1). The debuild command executes the lintian command to make a static     check after building the Debian package. The lintian command can be customized with the following in the ~/.devscripts file:     DEBUILD_DPKG_BUILDPACKAGE_OPTS="-us -uc -I -i" DEBUILD_LINTIAN_OPTS="-i -I --show-overrides"     Cleaning the source and rebuilding the package from your user account is as simple as:     $ debuild     You can clean the source tree as simply as:     $ debuild -- clean 6.4. pbuilder package For a clean room (chroot) build environment to verify the build dependencies, the pbuilder package is very useful. ^[66] This     ensures a clean build from the source under the sid auto-builder for different architectures and avoids a severity serious FTBFS (Fails To Build From Source) bug which is always in the RC (release critical) category. ^[67]     Let's customize the pbuilder package as follows: * setting the /var/cache/pbuilder/result directory writable by your user account. * creating a directory, e.g. /var/cache/pbuilder/hooks, writable by the user, to place hook scripts in.     * configuring ~/.pbuilderrc or /etc/pbuilderrc to include the following. AUTO_DEBSIGN=${AUTO_DEBSIGN:-no} HOOKDIR=/var/cache/pbuilder/hooks     First let's initialize the local pbuilder chroot system as follows:     $ sudo pbuilder create If you already have a completed source package, issue the     following commands in the directory where the foo.orig.tar.gz, foo.debian.tar.gz, and foo.dsc files exist to update the local pbuilder chroot system and to build binary packages in it:     $ sudo pbuilder --update $ sudo pbuilder --build foo_version.dsc     The newly built packages without the GPG signatures will be located in /var/cache/pbuilder/result/ with non-root ownership.     The GPG signatures on the .dsc file and the .changes file can be generated as:     $ cd /var/cache/pbuilder/result/ $ debsign foo_version_arch.changes If you have an updated source tree but have not generated the     matching source package, issue the following commands in the source directory where the debian directory exists, instead:     $ sudo pbuilder --update $ pdebuild You can log into its chroot environment with the pbuilder --login     --save-after-login command and configure it as you wish. This environment can be saved by leaving its shell prompt with ^D (Control-D). The latest version of the lintian command can be executed in the     chroot environment using the hook script /var/cache/pbuilder/ hooks/B90lintian configured as follows: ^[68] #!/bin/sh set -e install_packages() { apt-get -y --allow-downgrades install "$@" }     install_packages lintian echo "+++ lintian output +++" su -c "lintian -i -I --show-overrides /tmp/buildd/*.changes" - pbuilder # use this version if you don't want lintian to fail the build #su -c "lintian -i -I --show-overrides /tmp/buildd/*.changes; :" - pbuilder echo "+++ end of lintian output +++" You need to have access to the latest sid environment to build packages properly for sid. In practice, sid may be experiencing     issues which makes it undesirable for you to migrate your whole system. The pbuilder package can help you to cope with this kind of situation. You may need to update your stable packages after their release for stable-proposed-updates, stable/updates, etc. ^[69] For such     occasions, the fact that you may be running a sid system is not a good enough excuse for failing to update them promptly. The pbuilder package can help you to access environments of almost any Debian derivative distribution of the same architecture.     See http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/software/pbuilder.html, pdebuild(1), pbuilderrc(5), and pbuilder(8). 6.5. git-buildpackage command and similar If your upstream uses a source code management system (VCS) ^[70] to maintain their code, you should consider using it as well.     This makes merging and cherry-picking upstream patches much easier. There are several specialized wrapper script packages for Debian package building for each VCS. * git-buildpackage: a suite to help with Debian packages in Git repositories.     * svn-buildpackage: helper programs to maintain Debian packages with Subversion. * cvs-buildpackage: a set of Debian package scripts for CVS source trees. Use of git-buildpackage is becoming quite popular for Debian     Developers to manage Debian packages with the Git server on alioth.debian.org. ^[71] This package offers many commands to automate packaging activities: * gbp-import-dsc(1): import a previous Debian package to a Git repository. * gbp-import-orig(1): import a new upstream tar to a Git repository.     * gbp-dch(1): generate the Debian changelog from Git commit messages. * git-buildpackage(1): build Debian packages from a Git repository. * git-pbuilder(1): build Debian packages from a Git repository using pbuilder/cowbuilder.     These commands use 3 branches to track packaging activity: * main for Debian package source tree.     * upstream for upstream source tree. * pristine-tar for upstream tarball generated by the --pristine-tar option.^[72]     You can configure git-buildpackage with ~/.gbp.conf. See gbp.conf (5). ^[73] 6.6. Quick rebuild With a large package, you may not want to rebuild from scratch     every time while you're tuning details in debian/rules. For testing purposes, you can make a .deb file without rebuilding the upstream sources like this^[74]:     $ fakeroot debian/rules binary     Or simply do the following to see if it builds or not:     $ fakeroot debian/rules build Once you are finished with your tuning, remember to rebuild     following the proper procedure. You may not be able to upload correctly if you try to upload .deb files built this way. 6.7. Command hierarchy Here is a quick summary of how many commands to build packages     fit together in the command hierarchy. There are many ways to do the same thing. * debian/rules = maintainer script for the package building * dpkg-buildpackage = core of the package building tool * debuild = dpkg-buildpackage + lintian (build under the sanitized environment variables) * pbuilder = core of the Debian chroot environment tool     * pdebuild = pbuilder + dpkg-buildpackage (build in the chroot) * cowbuilder = speed up the pbuilder execution * git-pbuilder = the easy-to-use commandline syntax for pdebuild (used by gbp buildpackage) * gbp = manage the Debian source under the git repo * gbp buildpackage = pbuilder + dpkg-buildpackage + gbp Although use of higher level commands such as gbp buildpackage     and pbuilder ensures the perfect package building environment, it is essential to understand how lower level commands such as debian/rules and dpkg-buildpackage are executed under them. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ^[62] This GPG key must be signed by a Debian developer to get connected to the web of trust and must be registered to the     Debian keyring. This enables your uploaded packages to be accepted to the Debian archives. See Creating a new GPG key and Debian Wiki on Keysigning. ^[63] You can avoid applying quilt patches in the 3.0 (quilt)     source format at the end of the extraction with the --skip-patches option. Alternatively, you can run dquilt pop -a after normal operation. ^[64] The actual autobuilder system involves much more     complicated schemes than the one documented here. Such details are beyond the scope of this document. ^[65] Unlike under the pbuilder package, the chroot environment     under the sbuild package used by the autobuilder system does not enforce the use of a minimal system and may have many leftover packages installed. ^[66] Since the pbuilder package is still evolving, you should     check the actual configuration situation by consulting the latest official documentation.     ^[67] See http://buildd.debian.org/ for more on Debian package auto-building. ^[68] This assumes HOOKDIR=/var/cache/pbuilder/hooks. You can     find many examples of hook scripts in the /usr/share/doc/pbuilder /examples directory.     ^[69] There are some restrictions for such updates of your stable package.     ^[70] See Version control systems for more.     ^[71] Debian wiki Alioth documents how to use the alioth.debian.org service. ^[72] The --pristine-tar option invokes the pristine-tar command,     which can regenerate an exact copy of a pristine upstream tarball using only a small binary delta file and the contents of the tarball that are typically kept in an upstream branch in the VCS.     ^[73] Here are some web resources available for advanced audiences. * Building Debian Packages with git-buildpackage (/usr/share/ doc/git-buildpackage/manual-html/gbp.html)     * debian packages in git * Using Git for Debian Packaging * git-dpm: Debian packages in Git manager ^[74] Environment variables that are normally configured to     proper values are not set by this method. Never create real packages to be uploaded using this quick method. Chapter 7. Checking the package for errors The rewrite of this tutorial document with updated contents and     more practical examples is available as Guide for Debian Maintainers. Please use this new tutorial as the primary tutorial document.     There are some techniques you should know for checking a package for errors before uploading it to the public archives. It's also a good idea to carry out testing on a machine other     than your own. You must watch closely for any warnings or errors for all the tests described here. 7.1. Suspicious changes If you find a new autogenerated patch file such as debian-changes-* in the debian/patches directory after building your non-native Debian package in 3.0 (quilt) format, chances are     you changed some files by accident or the build script modified the upstream source. If it is your mistake, fix it. If it is caused by the build script, fix the root cause with dh-autoreconf as in Section 4.4.3, “Customization of rules file” or work around it with source/options as in Section 5.24, “source/options”. 7.2. Verifying a package's installation You must test your package for whether it installs without     problems. The debi(1) command helps you to test installing all the generated binary packages.     $ sudo debi gentoo_0.9.12-1_i386.changes To prevent installation problems on different systems, you must make sure that there are no filenames conflicting with other existing packages, using the Contents-i386 file downloaded from the Debian archive. The apt-file command may be handy for this     task. If there are collisions, please take action to avoid this real problem, whether by renaming the file, moving a common file to a separate package that multiple packages can depend on, using the alternatives mechanism (see update-alternatives(1)) in coordination with the maintainers of other affected packages, or declaring a Conflicts relationship in the debian/control file. 7.3. Verifying a package's maintainer scripts All maintainer scripts (that is, preinst, prerm, postinst, and postrm files) are hard to write correctly unless they are     auto-generated by the debhelper programs. So do not use them if you are a novice maintainer (see Section 5.18, “{pre,post} {inst,rm}”). If the package makes use of these non-trivial maintainer scripts, be sure to test not only for install but also for remove, purge,     and upgrade processes. Many maintainer script bugs show up when packages are removed or purged. Use the dpkg command as follows to test them: $ sudo dpkg -r gentoo     $ sudo dpkg -P gentoo $ sudo dpkg -i gentoo_version-revision_i386.deb     This should be done with sequences such as the following: * install the previous version (if needed). * upgrade it from the previous version. * downgrade it back to the previous version (optional). * purge it.     * install the new package. * remove it. * install it again. * purge it. If this is your first package, you should create dummy packages     with different versions to test your package in advance to prevent future problems. Bear in mind that if your package has previously been released in     Debian, people will often be upgrading to your package from the version that was in the last Debian release. Remember to test upgrades from that version too.     Although downgrading is not officially supported, supporting it is a friendly gesture. 7.4. Using lintian Run lintian(1) on your .changes file. The lintian command runs     many test scripts to check for many common packaging errors. ^ [75]     $ lintian -i -I --show-overrides gentoo_0.9.12-1_i386.changes Of course, replace the filename with the name of the .changes     file generated for your package. The output of the lintian command uses the following flags: * E: for error; a sure policy violation or packaging error. * W: for warning; a possible policy violation or packaging error.     * I: for info; information on certain aspects of packaging. * N: for note; a detailed message to help your debugging. * O: for overridden; a message overridden by the lintian-overrides files but displayed by the --show-overrides option. When you see warnings, tune the package to avoid them or verify     that the warnings are spurious. If spurious, set up lintian-overrides files as described in Section 5.14, “{package .,source/}lintian-overrides”. Note that you can build the package with dpkg-buildpackage and     run lintian on it in one command, if you use debuild(1) or pdebuild(1). 7.5. The debc command     You can list files in the binary Debian package with the debc(1) command.     $ debc package.changes 7.6. The debdiff command     You can compare file contents in two source Debian packages with the debdiff(1) command.     $ debdiff old-package.dsc new-package.dsc     You can also compare file lists in two sets of binary Debian packages with the debdiff(1) command.     $ debdiff old-package.changes new-package.changes These are useful to identify what has been changed in the source     packages and to check for inadvertent changes made when updating binary packages, such as unintentionally misplacing or removing files. 7.7. The interdiff command You can compare two diff.gz files with the interdiff(1) command.     This is useful for verifying that no inadvertent changes were made to the source by the maintainer when updating packages in the old 1.0 source format.     $ interdiff -z old-package.diff.gz new-package.diff.gz The new 3.0 source format stores changes in multiple patch files     as described in Section 5.25, “patches/*”. You can trace changes of each debian/patches/* file using interdiff, too. 7.8. The mc command Many of these file inspection operations can be made into an     intuitive process by using a file manager like mc(1) which will let you browse not only the contents of *.deb package files but also *.udeb, *.debian.tar.gz, *.diff.gz, and *.orig.tar.gz files. Be on the lookout for extra unneeded files or zero length files,     both in the binary and source package. Often cruft doesn't get cleaned up properly; adjust your rules file to compensate for this. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ^[75] You do not need to provide the lintian option -i -I     --show-overrides if you customized /etc/devscripts.conf or ~ /.devscripts as described in Section 6.3, “debuild command”. Chapter 8. Updating the package The rewrite of this tutorial document with updated contents and     more practical examples is available as Guide for Debian Maintainers. Please use this new tutorial as the primary tutorial document.     After you release a package, you will soon need to update it. 8.1. New Debian revision Let's say that a bug report was filed against your package as #     654321, and it describes a problem that you can solve. Here's what you need to do to create a new Debian revision of the package: * If this is to be recorded as a new patch, do the following: + dquilt new bugname.patch to set the patch name; + dquilt add buggy-file to declare the file to be modified; + Correct the problem in the package source for the upstream bug; + dquilt refresh to record it to bugname.patch; + dquilt header -e to add its description; * If this is to update an existing patch, do the following: + dquilt pop foo.patch to recall the existing foo.patch; + Correct the problem in the old foo.patch; + dquilt refresh to update foo.patch; + dquilt header -e to update its description; + while dquilt push; do dquilt refresh; done to apply all patches while removing fuzz;     * Add a new revision at the top of the Debian changelog file, for example with dch -i, or explicitly with dch -v version- revision and then insert the comments using your preferred editor. ^[76] * Include a short description of the bug and the solution in the changelog entry, followed by Closes: #654321. That way, the bug report will be automagically closed by the archive maintenance software the moment your package gets accepted into the Debian archive. * Repeat what you did in the above to fix more bugs while updating the Debian changelog file with dch as needed. * Repeat what you did in Section 6.1, “Complete (re)build” and Chapter 7, Checking the package for errors. * Once you are satisfied, you should change the distribution value in changelog from UNRELEASED to the target distribution value unstable (or even experimental).^[77] * Upload the package as in Chapter 9, Uploading the package. The difference is that this time, the original source archive won't be included, as it hasn't been changed and it already exists in the Debian archive. One tricky case can occur when you make a local package, to experiment with the packaging before uploading the normal version to the official archive, e.g., 1.0.1-1. For smoother upgrades, it     is a good idea to create a changelog entry with a version string such as 1.0.1-1~rc1. You may unclutter changelog by consolidating such local change entries into a single entry for the official package. See Section 2.6, “Package name and version” for the order of version strings.     8.2. Inspection of the new upstream release     When preparing packages of a new upstream release for the Debian archive, you must check the new upstream release first.     Start by reading the upstream changelog, NEWS, and whatever other documentation they may have released with the new version.     You can then inspect changes between the old and new upstream sources as follows, watching out for anything suspicious:     $ diff -urN foo-oldversion foo-newversion Changes to some auto-generated files by Autotools such as missing, aclocal.m4, config.guess, config.h.in, config.sub,     configure, depcomp, install-sh, ltmain.sh, and Makefile.in may be ignored. You may delete them before running diff on the source for inspection. 8.3. New upstream release If a package foo is properly packaged in the newer 3.0 (native) or 3.0 (quilt) formats, packaging a new upstream version is     essentially moving the old debian directory to the new source. This can be done by running tar xvzf /path/to/foo_oldversion .debian.tar.gz in the new extracted source. ^[78] Of course, you need to do some obvious chores: * Create a copy of the upstream source as the foo_newversion .orig.tar.gz file. * Update the Debian changelog file with dch -v newversion-1. + Add an entry with New upstream release. + Describe concisely the changes in the new upstream     release that fix reported bugs and close those bugs by adding Closes: #bug_number. + Describe concisely the changes to the new upstream release by the maintainer that fix reported bugs and close those bugs by adding Closes: #bug_number. * while dquilt push; do dquilt refresh; done to apply all patches while removing fuzz.     If the patch/merge did not apply cleanly, inspect the situation (clues are left in .rej files). * If a patch you applied to the source was integrated into the upstream source, + dquilt delete to remove it. * If a patch you applied to the source conflicted with new changes in the upstream source,     + dquilt push -f to apply old patches while forcing rejects as baz.rej. + Edit the baz file manually to bring about the intended effect of baz.rej. + dquilt refresh to update the patch. * Continue as usual with while dquilt push; do dquilt refresh; done.     This process can be automated using the uupdate(1) command as follows: $ apt-get source foo ... dpkg-source: info: extracting foo in foo-oldversion dpkg-source: info: unpacking foo_oldversion.orig.tar.gz dpkg-source: info: applying foo_oldversion-1.debian.tar.gz $ ls -F foo-oldversion/ foo_oldversion-1.debian.tar.gz     foo_oldversion-1.dsc foo_oldversion.orig.tar.gz $ wget http://example.org/foo/foo-newversion.tar.gz $ cd foo-oldversion $ uupdate -v newversion ../foo-newversion.tar.gz $ cd ../foo-newversion $ while dquilt push; do dquilt refresh; done $ dch ... document changes made If you set up a debian/watch file as described in Section 5.21, “watch”, you can skip the wget command. You simply run uscan(1)     in the foo-oldversion directory instead of the uupdate command. This will automagically look for the updated source, download it, and run the uupdate command. ^[79] You can release this updated source by repeating what you did in     Section 6.1, “Complete (re)build”, Chapter 7, Checking the package for errors, and Chapter 9, Uploading the package. 8.4. Updating the packaging style Updating the package style is not a required activity for the     update of a package. However, doing so lets you use the full capabilities of the modern debhelper system and the 3.0 source format. ^[80] * If you need to recreate deleted template files for any reason, you can run dh_make again in the same Debian package source tree with the --addmissing option. Then edit them appropriately. * If the package has not been updated to use the debhelper v7+ dh syntax for the debian/rules file, update it to use dh. Update the debian/control file accordingly. * If you want to update the rules file created with the Makefile inclusion mechanism of the Common Debian Build System (cdbs) to the dh syntax, see the following to understand its DEB_* configuration variables. + local copy of /usr/share/doc/cdbs/cdbs-doc.pdf.gz + The Common Debian Build System (CDBS), FOSDEM 2009     * If you have a 1.0 source package without the foo.diff.gz file, you can update it to the newer 3.0 (native) source format by creating debian/source/format with 3.0 (native). The rest of the debian/* files can just be copied. * If you have a 1.0 source package with the foo.diff.gz file, you can update it to the newer 3.0 (quilt) source format by creating debian/source/format with 3.0 (quilt). The rest of the debian/* files can just be copied. Import the big.diff file generated by the command filterdiff -z -x '*/debian/*' foo.diff.gz > big.diff to your quilt system, if needed. ^[81] * If it was packaged using another patch system such as dpatch, dbs, or cdbs with -p0, -p1, or -p2, convert it to quilt using deb3 at http://bugs.debian.org/581186. * If it was packaged with the dh command with the --with quilt option or with the dh_quilt_patch and dh_quilt_unpatch commands, remove these and make it use the newer 3.0 (quilt) source format.     You should check DEP - Debian Enhancement Proposals and adopt ACCEPTED proposals.     You need to do the other tasks described in Section 8.3, “New upstream release”, too. 8.5. UTF-8 conversion     If upstream documents are encoded in old encoding schemes, converting them to UTF-8 is a good idea. * Use iconv(1) to convert encodings of plain text files. iconv -f latin1 -t utf8 foo_in.txt > foo_out.txt * Use w3m(1) to convert from HTML files to UTF-8 plain text     files. When you do this, make sure to execute it under UTF-8 locale. LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 w3m -o display_charset=UTF-8 \ -cols 70 -dump -no-graph -T text/html \ < foo_in.html > foo_out.txt 8.6. Reminders for updating packages     Here are a few reminders for updating packages: * Preserve old changelog entries (sounds obvious, but there have been cases of people typing dch when they should have typed dch -i.) * Existing Debian changes need to be reevaluated; throw away stuff that upstream has incorporated (in one form or another) and remember to keep stuff that hasn't been incorporated by upstream, unless there is a compelling reason not to.     * If any changes were made to the build system (hopefully you'd know from inspecting upstream changes) then update the debian /rules and debian/control build dependencies if necessary. * Check the Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS) to see if someone has provided patches to bugs that are currently open. * Check the contents of the .changes file to make sure you are uploading to the correct distribution, the proper bug closures are listed in the Closes field, the Maintainer and Changed-By fields match, the file is GPG-signed, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------     ^[76] To get the date in the required format, use LANG=C date -R. ^[77] If you use the dch -r command to make this last change,     please make sure to save the changelog file explicitly by the editor. ^[78] If a package foo is packaged in the old 1.0 format, this     can be done by running zcat /path/to/foo_oldversion.diff.gz|patch -p1 in the new extracted source, instead. ^[79] If the uscan command downloads the updated source but it     does not run the uupdate command, you should correct the debian/ watch file to have debian uupdate at the end of the URL. ^[80] If your sponsor or other maintainers object to updating the     existing packaging style, don't bother arguing. There are more important things to do.     ^[81] You can split big.diff into many small incremental patches using the splitdiff command. Chapter 9. Uploading the package The rewrite of this tutorial document with updated contents and     more practical examples is available as Guide for Debian Maintainers. Please use this new tutorial as the primary tutorial document.     Debian now requires source-only uploads for normal upload. So this page is outdated.     Now that you have tested your new package thoroughly, you want to release it to a public archive to share it. 9.1. Uploading to the Debian archive Once you become an official developer, ^[82] you can upload the     package to the Debian archive. ^[83] You can do this manually, but it's easier to use the existing automated tools, like dupload (1) or dput(1). We'll describe how it's done with dupload. ^[84] First you have to set up dupload's config file. You can either     edit the system-wide /etc/dupload.conf file, or have your own ~ /.dupload.conf file override the few things you want to change.     You can read the dupload.conf(5) manual page to understand what each of these options means. The $default_host option determines which of the upload queues     will be used by default. anonymous-ftp-master is the primary one, but it's possible that you will want to use another one. ^[85]     While connected to the Internet, you can upload your package as follows:     $ dupload gentoo_0.9.12-1_i386.changes dupload checks that the SHA1/SHA256 file checksums match those     listed in the .changes file. If they do not match, it will warn you to rebuild it as described in Section 6.1, “Complete (re) build” so it can be properly uploaded. If you encounter an upload problem at ftp://ftp.upload.debian.org     /pub/UploadQueue/, you can fix this by manually uploading a GPG-signed *.commands file to there with ftp. ^[86] For example, using hello.commands: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Uploader: Foo Bar Commands: rm hello_1.0-1_i386.deb     mv hello_1.0-1.dsx hello_1.0-1.dsc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) [...] -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- 9.2. Including orig.tar.gz for upload When you first upload the package to the archive, you need to     include the original orig.tar.gz source, too. If the Debian revision number of this package is neither 1 nor 0, you must provide the dpkg-buildpackage option -sa.     For the dpkg-buildpackage command:     $ dpkg-buildpackage -sa     For the debuild command:     $ debuild -sa     For the pdebuild command:     $ pdebuild --debbuildopts -sa     On the other hand, the -sd option will force the exclusion of the original orig.tar.gz source. 9.3. Skipped uploads If you created multiple entries in debian/changelog by skipping     uploads, you must create a proper *_.changes file that includes all changes since the last upload. This can be done by specifying the dpkg-buildpackage option -v with the version, e.g., 1.2.     For the dpkg-buildpackage command:     $ dpkg-buildpackage -v1.2     For the debuild command:     $ debuild -v1.2     For the pdebuild command:     $ pdebuild --debbuildopts "-v1.2" ---------------------------------------------------------------------     ^[82] See Section 1.1, “Social dynamics of Debian”. ^[83] There are publicly accessible archives such as http:// mentors.debian.net/ which work almost the same way as the Debian     archive and provide an upload area for non-DDs. You can set up an equivalent archive by yourself using the tools listed at http:// wiki.debian.org/HowToSetupADebianRepository. So this section is useful for non-DDs, too. ^[84] The dput package seems to come with more features and to be becoming more popular than the dupload package. It uses the file     /etc/dput for its global configuration and the file ~/.dput.cf for per-user configuration. It supports Ubuntu-related services out-of-the-box, too.     ^[85] See Debian Developer's Reference 5.6, "Uploading a package". ^[86] See ftp://ftp.upload.debian.org/pub/UploadQueue/README.     Alternatively, you can use the dcut command from the dput package. Appendix A. Advanced packaging The rewrite of this tutorial document with updated contents and     more practical examples is available as Guide for Debian Maintainers. Please use this new tutorial as the primary tutorial document. Here are some hints and pointers for advanced packaging topics     that you are most likely to deal with. You are strongly advised to read all the references suggested here. You may need to manually edit the packaging template files     generated by the dh_make command to address topics covered in this chapter. The newer debmake command should address these topics better. A.1. Shared libraries     Before packaging shared libraries, you should read the following primary references in detail: * Debian Policy Manual, 8 "Shared libraries"     * Debian Policy Manual, 9.1.1 "File System Structure" * Debian Policy Manual, 10.2 "Libraries"     Here are some oversimplified hints for you to get started: * Shared libraries are ELF object files containing compiled code. * Shared libraries are distributed as *.so files. (Neither *.a files nor *.la files) * Shared libraries are mainly used to share common codes among multiple executables with the ld mechanism. * Shared libraries are sometimes used to provide multiple plugins to an executable with the dlopen mechanism. * Shared libraries export symbols, which represent compiled objects such as variables, functions, and classes; and enable access to them from the linked executables. * The SONAME of a shared library libfoo.so.1: objdump -p libfoo .so.1 | grep SONAME ^[87] * The SONAME of a shared library usually matches the library file name (but not always).     * The SONAME of shared libraries linked to /usr/bin/foo: objdump -p /usr/bin/foo | grep NEEDED ^[88] * libfoo1: the library package for the shared library libfoo .so.1 with the SONAME ABI version 1.^[89] * The package maintainer scripts of the library package must call ldconfig under the specific circumstances to create the necessary symbolic links for the SONAME.^[90] * libfoo1-dbg: the debugging symbols package that contains the debugging symbols for the shared library package libfoo1. * libfoo-dev: the development package that contains the header files etc. for the shared library libfoo.so.1.^[91] * Debian packages should not contain *.la Libtool archive files in general.^[92] * Debian packages should not use RPATH in general.^[93] * Although it is somewhat outdated and is only a secondary reference, Debian Library Packaging Guide may still be useful. A.2. Managing debian/package.symbols When you package a shared library, you should create a debian/ package.symbols file to manage the minimal version associated     with each symbol for backward-compatible ABI changes under the same SONAME of the library for the same shared library package name.^[94] You should read the following primary references in detail: * Debian Policy Manual, 8.6.3 "The symbols system"^[95] * dh_makeshlibs(1)     * dpkg-gensymbols(1) * dpkg-shlibdeps(1) * deb-symbols(5) Here is a rough example of how to create the libfoo1 package from     the upstream version 1.3 with the proper debian/libfoo1.symbols file: * Prepare the skeleton debianized source tree using the upstream libfoo-1.3.tar.gz file. + If this is the first packaging of the libfoo1 package, create the debian/libfoo1.symbols file with empty content. + If the previous upstream version 1.2 was packaged as the libfoo1 package with the proper debian/libfoo1.symbols in its source package, use it again. + If the previous upstream version 1.2 was not packaged with debian/libfoo1.symbols, create it as the symbols file from all available binary packages of the same shared library package name containing the same SONAME of the library, for example, versions 1.1-1 and 1.2-1. ^[96] $ dpkg-deb -x libfoo1_1.1-1.deb libfoo1_1.1-1 $ dpkg-deb -x libfoo1_1.2-1.deb libfoo1_1.2-1 $ : > symbols $ dpkg-gensymbols -v1.1 -plibfoo1 -Plibfoo1_1.1-1 -Osymbols $ dpkg-gensymbols -v1.2 -plibfoo1 -Plibfoo1_1.2-1 -Osymbols * Make trial builds of the source tree with tools such as debuild and pdebuild. (If this fails due to missing symbols etc., there were some backward-incompatible ABI changes that require you to bump the shared library package name to something like libfoo1a and you should start over again.) $ cd libfoo-1.3     $ debuild ... dpkg-gensymbols: warning: some new symbols appeared in the symbols file: ... see diff output below --- debian/libfoo1.symbols (libfoo1_1.3-1_amd64) +++ dpkg-gensymbolsFE5gzx 2012-11-11 02:24:53.609667389 +0900 @@ -127,6 +127,7 @@ foo_get_name@Base 1.1 foo_get_longname@Base 1.2 foo_get_type@Base 1.1 + foo_get_longtype@Base 1.3-1 foo_get_symbol@Base 1.1 foo_get_rank@Base 1.1 foo_new@Base 1.1 ... * If you see the diff printed by the dpkg-gensymbols as above, extract the proper updated symbols file from the generated binary package of the shared library. ^[97] $ cd .. $ dpkg-deb -R libfoo1_1.3_amd64.deb libfoo1-tmp $ sed -e 's/1\.3-1/1\.3/' libfoo1-tmp/DEBIAN/symbols \ >libfoo-1.3/debian/libfoo1.symbols * Build release packages with tools such as debuild and pdebuild. $ cd libfoo-1.3 $ debuild -- clean $ debuild ... In addition to the above examples, we need to check the ABI     compatibility further and bump versions for some symbols manually as needed. ^[98]     Although it is only a secondary reference, Debian wiki UsingSymbolsFiles and its linked web pages may be useful. A.3. Multiarch The multiarch feature introduced to Debian wheezy integrates     support for cross-architecture installation of binary packages (particularly i386<->amd64, but also other combinations) in dpkg and apt. You should read the following references in detail: * Ubuntu wiki MultiarchSpec (upstream)     * Debian wiki Multiarch/Implementation (Debian situation) It uses the triplet such as i386-linux-gnu and x86_64-linux-gnu for the install path of shared libraries. The actual triplet path     is dynamically set into the $(DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH) variable using the dpkg-architecture(1) command for each binary package build. For example, the path to install multiarch libraries are changed as follows:^[99] +-------------------------------------------------------------+ |Old path | i386 multiarch path | amd64 multiarch path |     |---------+------------------------+--------------------------| |/lib/ |/lib/i386-linux-gnu/ |/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ | |---------+------------------------+--------------------------| |/usr/lib/|/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/|/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/| +-------------------------------------------------------------+     Here are some typical multiarch package split scenario examples for the following: * a library source libfoo-1.tar.gz     * a tool source bar-1.tar.gz written in a compiled language * a tool source baz-1.tar.gz written in an interpreted language +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Package |Architecture:|Multi-Arch:| Package content | |------------+-------------+-----------+------------------------| |libfoo1 |any |same |the shared library, | | | | |co-installable | |------------+-------------+-----------+------------------------| |libfoo1-dbg |any |same |the shared library debug| | | | |symbols, co-installable | |------------+-------------+-----------+------------------------| | | | |the shared library | |libfoo-dev |any |same |header files etc., | | | | |co-installable | |------------+-------------+-----------+------------------------| | | | |the run-time support |     |libfoo-tools|any |foreign |programs, not | | | | |co-installable | |------------+-------------+-----------+------------------------| |libfoo-doc |all |foreign |the shared library | | | | |documentation files | |------------+-------------+-----------+------------------------| | | | |the compiled program | |bar |any |foreign |files, not | | | | |co-installable | |------------+-------------+-----------+------------------------| |bar-doc |all |foreign |the documentation files | | | | |for the program | |------------+-------------+-----------+------------------------| |baz |all |foreign |the interpreted program | | | | |files | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Please note that the development package should contain a symlink     for the associated shared library without a version number. E.g.: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfoo.so -> libfoo.so.1 A.4. Building a shared library package     You can build a Debian library package enabling multiarch support using dh(1) as follows: * Update debian/control. + Add Build-Depends: debhelper (>=10) for the source package section. + Add Pre-Depends: ${misc:Pre-Depends} for each shared library binary package. + Add Multi-Arch: stanza for each binary package section. * Set debian/compat to "10". * Adjust the path from the normal /usr/lib/ to the multiarch /usr/ lib/$(DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH)/ for all packaging scripts. + Call DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH ?= $(shell dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_MULTIARCH) in debian/rules to set the DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH variable first.     + Replace /usr/lib/ with /usr/lib/$(DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH)/ in debian/rules. + If ./configure is used in part of the override_dh_auto_configure target in debian/rules, make sure to replace it with dh_auto_configure -- . ^[100] + Replace all occurrences of /usr/lib/ with /usr/lib/*/ in debian/foo.install files. + Generate files like debian/foo.links from debian/foo.links.in dynamically by adding a script to the override_dh_auto_configure target in debian/rules. override_dh_auto_configure: dh_auto_configure sed 's/@DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH@/$(DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH)/g' \ debian/foo.links.in > debian/foo.links Please make sure to verify that the shared library package     contains only the expected files, and that your -dev package still works. All files installed simultaneously as the multiarch package to     the same file path should have exactly the same file content. You must be careful of differences generated by the data byte order and by the compression algorithm. A.5. Native Debian package If a package is maintained only for Debian or possibly only for     local use, its source may contain all the debian/* files in it. There are 2 ways to package it. You can make the upstream tarball by excluding the debian/* files     and package it as a non-native Debian package as in Section 2.1, “Debian package building workflow”. This is the normal way, which some people encourage using.     The alternative is the workflow of the native Debian package. * Create a native Debian source package in the 3.0 (native) format using a single compressed tar file in which all files are included.     + package_version.tar.gz + package_version.dsc * Build Debian binary packages from the native Debian source package. + package_version_arch.deb For example, if you have source files in ~/mypackage-1.0 without     the debian/* files, you can create a native Debian package by issuing the dh_make command as follows:     $ cd ~/mypackage-1.0 $ dh_make --native Then the debian directory and its contents are created just like in Section 2.8, “Initial non-native Debian package”. This does     not create a tarball, since this is a native Debian package. But that is the only difference. The rest of the packaging activities are practically the same.     After execution of the dpkg-buildpackage command, you will see the following files in the parent directory: * mypackage_1.0.tar.gz This is the source code tarball created from the mypackage-1.0 directory by the dpkg-source command. (Its suffix is not orig.tar.gz.) * mypackage_1.0.dsc This is a summary of the contents of the source code, as in the non-native Debian package. (There is no Debian revision.)     * mypackage_1.0_i386.deb This is your completed binary package, as in the non-native Debian package. (There is no Debian revision.) * mypackage_1.0_i386.changes This file describes all the changes made in the current package version as in the non-native Debian package. (There is no Debian revision.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------     ^[87] Alternatively: readelf -d libfoo.so.1 | grep SONAME     ^[88] Alternatively: readelf -d libfoo.so.1 | grep NEEDED     ^[89] See Debian Policy Manual, 8.1 "Run-time shared libraries".     ^[90] See Debian Policy Manual, 8.1.1 "ldconfig".     ^[91] See Debian Policy Manual, 8.3 "Static libraries" and Debian Policy Manual, 8.4 "Development files".     ^[92] See Debian wiki ReleaseGoals/LAFileRemoval.     ^[93] See Debian wiki RpathIssue. ^[94] Backward-incompatible ABI changes normally require you to     update the SONAME of the library and the shared library package name to new ones. ^[95] For C++ libraries and other cases where tracking individual     symbols is too difficult, follow Debian Policy Manual, 8.6.4 "The shlibs system", instead. ^[96] All previous versions of Debian packages are available at     http://snapshot.debian.org/. The Debian revision is dropped from the version to make it easier to backport the package: 1.1 << 1.1-1~bpo70+1 << 1.1-1 and 1.2 << 1.2-1~bpo70+1 << 1.2-1     ^[97] The Debian revision is dropped from the version to make it easier to backport the package: 1.3 << 1.3-1~bpo70+1 << 1.3-1     ^[98] See Debian Policy Manual, 8.6.2 "Shared library ABI changes".     ^[99] Old special purpose library paths such as /lib32/ and / lib64/ are not used anymore. ^[100] Alternatively, you can add --libdir=\$${prefix}/lib/$ (DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH) and --libexecdir=\$${prefix}/lib/$ (DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH) arguments to ./configure. Please note that     --libexecdir specifies the default path to install executable programs run by other programs rather than by users. Its Autotools default is /usr/libexec/ but its Debian default is /usr /lib/.