How to build a Debian Ubuntu package from source

Question

I have the source of a program  taken from cvs svn git      and I d like to build a Debian Ubuntu package for it  The package is present in the repositories  but    It is an older version  lacking features I need  I need slightly different compile options than the default    What is the easiest way of doing it  I am concerned about a couple of things   How can I check if I have listed all the dependencies correctly   I can get some hints by looking on what the older version depended  but new dependencies may have been added   How I can I prevent the update system installing the older version in the repo on an update  How I can prevent the system installing a newer version  when its out   overwriting my custom package

User · Answer

How can I check if I have listed all the dependencies correctly?

The pbuilder is an excellent tool for checking both build dependencies and dependencies by setting up a clean base system within a chroot environment. By compiling the package within pbuilder, you can easily check the build dependencies, and by testing it within a pbuilder environment, you can check the dependencies.

User · Answer

Here is a tutorial for building a Debian package   Basically  you need to    Set up your folder structure Create a control file Optionally create postinst or prerm scripts Run dpkg-deb   I usually do all of this in my Makefile so I can just type make to spit out the binary and package it in one go

User · Answer

First  the title question    Assuming the debian directory is already there  be in the source directory  the directory containing the debian directory  and invoke dpkg-buildpackage   I like to run it with these options   dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -nc   which mean don t sign the result and don t clean      How can I check if I have listed all the dependencies correctly    Getting the dependencies is a black art   The  official  way is to check build depends is if the package builds with only the base system  the  build-essential  packages  and the build dependencies you have specified   Don t know a general answer for regular Dependencies  just wade in        How I can I prevent the update system installing the older version in the repo on an update    How I can prevent the system installing a newer version  when its out   overwriting my custom package    My knowledge might be out of date on this one  but to address both  Use dpkg --set-selections   Assuming nullidentd was the package you wanted to stay put  run as root  echo  nullidentd hold    dpkg --set-selections   Alternately  since you are building from source  you can use an epoch to set the version number artificially high and never be bothered again   To use an epoch  add a new entry to the debian changelog file  and put a 99  in front of the version number   Given my nullidentd example  the first line of your updated changelog would read   nullidentd  99 1 0-4  unstable  urgency low   Bernard s link is good  especially if you have to create the debian directory yourself - also helpful are the developers reference and the general resource page   Adam s link also looks good but I m not familiar with it

User · Answer

If you want a quick and dirty way of installing the build dependencies  use   apt-get build-dep   This installs the dependencies  You need sources lines in your sources list for this   deb-src http   ftp nl debian org debian  squeeze-updates main contrib non-free   If you are backporting packages from testing to stable  please be advised that the dependencies might have changed  The command apt-get build-deb installs dependencies for the source packages in your current repository   But of course  dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc will show you any uninstalled dependencies   If you want to compile more often  use cowbuilder   apt-get install cowbuilder   Then create a build-area   sudo DIST squeeze ARCH amd64 cowbuilder --create  Then compile a source package   apt-get source cowsay    do your magic editing dpkg-source -b cowsay-3 03 dfsg1                build the new source packages cowbuilder --build cowsay 3 03 dfsg1-2 dsc      build the packages from source   Watch where cowbuilder puts the resulting package   Good luck

User · Answer

I believe this is the Debian package  bible   Well  it s the Debian new maintainer s guide  so a lot of it won t be applicable  but they do cover what goes where

User · Answer

you can use the special package  checkinstall  for all packages which are not even in debian ubuntu yet   You can use  uupdate   apt-get install devscripts  to build a package from source with existing debian sources   Example for libdrm2   apt-get build-dep libdrm2 apt-get source libdrm2 cd libdrm-2 3 1 uupdate   Downloads libdrm-2 4 1 tar gz cd    libdrm-2 4 1 dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -nc

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If you re using Ubuntu  check out the pkgcreator project  http   code google com p pkgcreator

User · Answer

For what you want to do  you probably want to use the debian source diff  so your package is similar to the official one apart from the upstream version used  You can download the source diff from packages debian org  or can get it along with the  dsc and the original source archive by using  apt-get source    Then you unpack your new version of the upstream source  change into that directory  and apply the diff you downloaded by doing  zcat   downloaded diff gz   patch -p1 chmod  x debian rules   Then make the changes you wanted to compile options  and build the package by doing  dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc

User · Answer

Sample Ubuntu-based build for ccache   sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get build-dep ccache apt-get -b source ccache sudo dpkg -i ccache  deb   More details  http   blog aplikacja info 2011 11 building-packages-from-sources-in-debianubuntu

User · Answer

you can use the special package  checkinstall  for all packages which are not even in debian ubuntu yet   You can use  uupdate   apt-get install devscripts  to build a package from source with existing debian sources   Example for libdrm2   apt-get build-dep libdrm2 apt-get source libdrm2 cd libdrm-2 3 1 uupdate   Downloads libdrm-2 4 1 tar gz cd    libdrm-2 4 1 dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -nc

User · Answer

put  debian  directory from original package to your source directory use  dch  to update version of package use  debuild  to build the package

[ubuntu] How to build a Debian/Ubuntu package from source?

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