creating deb package

Creating DEB package

Issue #53

This tutorial shows the most basic way of packaging a simple already-compiled program.

Decide on the name of your package. Standard debian notation is all lowercase in the following format:

<project>_<major version>.<minor version>-<package revision>

For example, you could name your first package:

helloworld_1.0-1

Create a directory to make your package in. The name should be the same as the package name.

mkdir helloworld_1.0-1

Pretend that the packaging directory is actually the root of the file system. Put the files of your program where they would be installed to on a system.

mkdir helloworld_1.0-1/usr
mkdir helloworld_1.0-1/usr/local
mkdir helloworld_1.0-1/usr/local/bin
cp "~/Projects/Hello World/helloworld" helloworld_1.0-1/usr/local/bin

or you can create package files with the 'make install' command:

make install DESTDIR=/root/Projects/Hello World/helloworld_1.0-1

Now create a special metadata file with which the package manager will install your program:

mkdir helloworld_1.0-1/DEBIAN
vi helloworld_1.0-1/DEBIAN/control

Put something like this in that file:

Package: helloworld
Version: 1.0-1
Section: base
Priority: optional
Architecture: i386
Depends: libsomethingorrather (>= 1.2.13), anotherDependency (>= 1.2.6)
Maintainer: Your Name <you@email.com>
Description: Hello World
 When you need some sunshine, just run this
 small program!
 
 (the space before each line in the description is important)

Now you just need to make the package:

dpkg-deb --build helloworld_1.0-1