Debian Package Management

German only - and rather outdated: DebianPaketVerwaltung

Managing Patches with Quilt

Cf. DebianWiki:UsingQuilt

1. Setup quilt environment:
   export QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches
export QUILT_REFRESH_ARGS="-p ab --no-timestamps --no-index"
2. … (More to come)

Building packages in a clean environment

pbuilder is a tool to create build chroots to check wether all build-dependencies are specified or to build for different flavors. cowbuilder adds support for recyclable build chroots. chroots can be created with cowbuilder --create.

If you would like to create a clean chroot for Debian Wheezy you would run:

sudo cowbuilder --create --basepath /var/cache/pbuilder/wheezy64.cow --distribution wheezy

pdebuild --pbuilder cowbuilder builds the source package first and then the binary package inside the chroot. Built packages end up in /var/cache/pbuilder/result/.

If you would like to build the package for Debian Wheezy and have created an appropriate chroot as described above, you would run:

pdebuild --pbuilder cowbuilder -- --basepath  /var/cache/pbuilder/wheezy64.cow

git-buildpackage

Cf. DebianWiki:PackagingWithGit

Managing patches in git

gbp-pq is a tool to manage patches in a separate patch-queue branch.

gbp-pq import creates and checks out the patch-queue branch. gbp-pq export creates patches for all commits to the patch-queue branch. Quite a few rebasing and git history rewriting may be required to keep the patches in shape.

Cf. https://honk.sigxcpu.org/piki/development/debian_packages_in_git/

git-pbuilder

Cf. DebianWiki:git-pbuilder

Useful tools

$ DebPkg:debian-el: Emacs-modes for various Debian-related file formats.

-- Christo - 2014