debutize

Automatically build Debian packages from source.

Overview

debutize builds a Debian package (.deb) from your project source according to the configuration defined in the .debutize.conf file in the root folder of your project. Once configured, building a package is as simple as running:

# debutize ./

The resulting Debian package will be in the root folder of your project called {pkg_name}_{pkg_version}_{pkg_architecture}.deb. So if you built version 2.0 of your project fooproj for amd64 platforms, your package would be called fooproj_2.0_amd64.deb.

Configuring

Metadata

The following package metadata options are available in the .debutize.conf:

• pkg_name - The package name *required
• pkg_version - The package version *required
• pkg_depends - The package's dependencies
• pkg_architecture - The (space-delimited) architectures of your package (can be all if architecture agnostic) *required
• pkg_section - The section your package should be included in for the repository
• pkg_priority - The package priority
• pkg_maintainer - The package maintainer, usually "First Last [email protected]" **required*
• pkg_description - The package description, if multiple lines, lines after the first must be prefixed with a space *required

### .debutize.conf

# package metadata
pkg_name="fooproj"
pkg_version="2.0"
pkg_depends="baz"
pkg_architecture="amd64 i386"
pkg_section="admin"
pkg_priority="extra"
pkg_maintainer="John Smith <[email protected]>"
pkg_description="fooproj is a utility for managing bar databases"

Targets

Targets are space-delimited source:destination pairs that identify files in your project source and their respective destinations in the package. Sources can be files or directories. A source directory name with a trailing slash copies the contents of the directory instead of the directory itself.

### .debutize.conf

# targets
targets="conf/:/etc/$pkg_name/ bin/:/usr/bin/ lib:/usr/lib/$pkg_name/"

Config Files

Debian packages make special considerations for configuration files. Files marked as configuration files won't be overwritten with package updates if they've been modified. You can define a list of config files using the conffiles option. Files are listed using space-delimited directory:pattern pairs.

For example, if you wanted to specify all files in /etc/fooproj suffixed with *.conf as config files, you would use

conffiles="/etc/fooproj:*.conf"

Even files in subdirectories of /etc/fooproj would be included. debutize uses find $directory -name "$pattern" to locate files.

Helpers

Helpers assist with the build process. Currently, only four helpers are available: systemd-stop.preinst, systemd-enable.postinst, systemd-start.postinst, and systemd-stop-disable.prerm. These helpers enable, start, stop, and disable the packages systemd unit respsectively. Helpers are enabled using the helpers variable in .debutize.conf.

helpers="systemd-stop.preinst systemd-enable.postinst systemd-start.postinst systemd-stop-disable.prerm`"

For convenience, you can use a pattern syntax to simply enable all four.

helpers="systemd*"