foobarwidget/debian-packaging-for-the-modern-developer

Debian packaging tutorials for the modern developer

debian-packaging-for-the-modern-developer's Issues

Where is 6-12?

The main readme says there is 12 tutorials
I only see 5

debian/compat can be replaced by debhelper-compat (= 9) with a "new enough" debhelper

In recent versions of debhelper, it has become possible to remove the debian/compat file by replacing it with a Build-Depends: debhelper-compat (= X), where X is the number you would have put in debian/compat (requires debhelper >= 11.3 and X >= 9). This makes packaging feel a bit more "DRY". :)

The existing method still works and is still supported if you are stuck on older versions of debhelper or need older compat versions than 9.

Lintian error

$ lintian hello_2.0.0-1_all.deb

E: hello: debian-changelog-file-missing
E: hello: no-copyright-file
W: hello: binary-without-manpage usr/bin/hello

How to fix the issue?
Thanks

tutorial 3

I tried to follow tutorial 3. I modified the source a bit to have a dependency (on mariadb). Otherwise the same.

Package is built and is ok except dependency not set. I get:

dpkg-gencontrol: warning: Depends field of package hello: substitution variable ${shlibs:Depends} used, but is not defined

Please advise.

Missing dh_shlibdeps from Tutorial 3

Hi and thanks for those tutorials, they helped me a lot.

In Tutorial 3, you forgot the dh_shlibdeps command in the rules file, wich is supposed to eval the ${shlibs:Depends} variable.

This is why you get from the output :

dpkg-gencontrol: warning: Depends field of package hello: unknown substitution variable ${shlibs:Depends}

Debian packages no longer require root with Debian buster or later

Hi,

Regarding "Debian packages are supposed to be built as root, for reasons that I also do not totally comprehend." in https://raw.githubusercontent.com/phusion/debian-packaging-for-the-modern-developer/master/tutorial-5/README.md. In Debian 10 (buster), it is possible to "opt-out" from the requirement for (fake)root has been removed.

This is done by setting Rules-Requires-Root: no in debian/control in the source paragraph along with removing any behaviours that require fakeroot or real root.

As for the rationale: Part of the reason for using root when building debs have been to ensure the "owner" and "group" of the files in the deb are recorded as root:root. This was often done with calls to "install -o root -g root ..." which attempted to chown the files to root. The use of (fake)root is still necessary for a few packages in the Debian archive that reason use "static ownership" recorded directly in the deb (as opposed dynamically creating the user at install time and using the postinst script to reassign ownership of the files/directories).