deboa

deboa is a Node.js tool for creating .deb files (and .ar files, if you ever need one for some reason).

It doesn't depend on any Unix-specific external binaries (I'm looking at you, dpkg and fakeroot), so you can create a .deb file in pretty much any platform you can run Node.js on: Windows (🔥), OS X, Linux (because why not), you name it.

Features

deboa provides all the tools you need to create a .deb from scratch or from your own control and data files:

• Create your .deb in any OS, no superuser privileges or external binaries required
• Supports compression in .tar, .tar.gz or .tar.xz out of the box. If you need another format, you can easily provide your own compressed files and let deboa do the rest
• Support for icon and desktop specification file
• Ability to set chmod permissions for every packaged file and to create symlinks, even on Windows

About .deb files

A .deb file is just an .ar file, which is made up by a file signature / magic number (the string !<arch>) followed by any number of metadata/file contents pairs.

.debs have three files, the last two are usually compressed in .tar, .tar.gz or .tar.xz format:

• the debian-binary file, containing just the string 2.0\n
• the control file, containing metadata about the software it contains and possibly some scripts to be executed before/after the software is installed/uninstalled
• the data file, which contains the actual software

Installation

# Yarn
yarn add --dev deboa

# npm
npm i -D deboa

API

Creating a .deb from scratch

So you have a folder with the Linux version of your app ready to package. You can use the Deboa class to create the control file and compress the specified directory into the data file for you. The following code creates a .deb file with the bare minimum options:

import { Deboa } from 'deboa'

const deboa = new Deboa({
  controlFileOptions: {
    maintainer: 'John Doe <john@example.com>',
    packageName: 'my-awesome-app',
    shortDescription: 'users will see this when installing your app',
    version: '1.0.0',
  },
  sourceDir: './my-awesome-app-linux-x64',
  targetDir: './out',
})

deboa.package().then(() => {
  console.log('done')
})

Additional options

For more details, please see the IDeboa interface.

• additionalTarEntries: runs after all source files are added to the .tar archive. You can use it to create any symbolic links you might need:

  const deboa = new Deboa({
    additionalTarEntries: [
      // creates a relative symlink from /usr/lib/my-awesome-app/some-executable-file
      // to /usr/bin/my-awesome-app, equivalent to:
      // cd /usr/bin && ln -s ../lib/my-awesome-app/some-executable-file some-executable-file
      {
        gname: 'root',
        linkname: '../lib/my-awesome-app/some-executable-file', // link source
        mode: parseInt('777', 8),
        name: 'usr/bin/my-awesome-app', // link target
        type: 'symlink',
        uname: 'root',
      }
    ],
    // other options
  })

• beforeCreateDesktopEntry: runs before the desktop entry file is created. Allows you to modify the default entries and to add your own.

• beforePackage: runs after the files are copied to the temporary directory and before they're packaged. You can use this to add/delete/rename any files before they're packaged.

• controlFileOptions: additional control file fields. See the IControlFileOptions interface for details.

• icon: path to the image you want to use as your app icon.

• installationRoot: directory your files will be installed to. Defaults to /usr/lib/${packageName}.

• modifyTarHeader: allows you to modify the header of a file before it's added to the data tar archive. The main use case for this option is setting permissions in order to make files executable when creating a .deb on Windows:

  const deboa = new Deboa({
    modifyTarHeader: header => {
      if (header.name === 'usr/lib/my-awesome-app/some-executable-file') {
        header.mode = parseInt('0755', 8)
      }
  
      return header
    },
    // other options
  })

• tarballFormat: can be tar, tar.gz (default) or tar.xz.

Creating a .deb from existing control and data files

If you have your control file handy and your data file already compressed and ready to go, you can use the writeFromFile method from the DeboaFromFile class to create the metadata and write them directly to the .deb file. This allows you to have your files compressed by your favorite tool in the format that is best for your case.

import { DeboaFromFile } from 'deboa'

;(async () => {
  const deboa = new DeboaFromFile({
    outputFile: '/path/to/my-awesome-app_1.0.0_amd64.deb',
  })

  await deboa.writeFromFile('/path/to/control.tar.gz')
  await deboa.writeFromFile('/path/to/data.tar.gz')

  deboa.writeStream.close()

  console.log('done')
})()

If you need access to the underlying read streams, you can use the createReadStream method, which takes care of the metadata, then pass the returned stream to the writeFromStream method:

import { DeboaFromFile } from 'deboa'

;(async () => {
  const deboa = new DeboaFromFile({
    outputFile: '/path/to/my-awesome-app_1.0.0_amd64.deb',
  })

  const controlStream = await deboa.createReadStream('/path/to/control.tar.gz')
  await deboa.writeFromStream(controlStream)

  const dataStream = await deboa.createReadStream('/path/to/data.tar.gz')
  await deboa.writeFromStream(dataStream)

  deboa.writeStream.close()

  console.log('done')
})()

Note that you need to write the control and data files in that order, otherwise the generated .deb will be invalid.

Creating an .ar file

Same as above, just add the isARFile: true option to the constructor so the debian-binary file doesn't get created:

import { DeboaFromFile } from 'deboa'

;(async() => {
  const ar = new DeboaFromFile({
    outputFile: '/path/to/output.ar',
    isARFile: true,
  })

  await ar.writeFromFile('/path/to/some/file')

  deboa.writeStream.close()

  console.log('done')
})()

I've added this option just because it was trivial. If you're here because of it, please leave a comment, I'm very interested in knowing what you've been working with.