4. Hands On

4.1. control

Let's start with the control file. The version number must have a dash with an additional Debian package version number, e.g. '1.1-1'. If your program consists e.g. only of portable shell scripts, use 'all' as its 'Architecture'.

For 'Depends' you might need to find out to which package a certain file or program your new package relies onto belongs to. There is a web page where you can search for Debian files: http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages. Go to the bottom of that page. Once you know the package name, you can get further version details of this package on your own system with 'apt-cache showpkg package'.

'Suggests', 'Conflicts', and 'Replaces' etc. can be left out if not needed.

So here is the result of our first 'control' file:

[1]

The 'control' file gets copied into a directory called 'DEBIAN' inside the other 'debian' directory.

$ mkdir -p debian/DEBIAN
$ find ./debian -type d | xargs chmod 755   # this is necessary on Debian Woody, don't ask me why
$ cp control debian/DEBIAN

If you expect your package to have a bigger audience in the future it might help to read this Writing Debian package descriptions article.

4.2. dpkg-deb

Now it is almost done. Just type:

$ dpkg-deb --build debian
dpkg-deb: building package `linuxstatus' in `debian.deb'.
$ mv debian.deb linuxstatus_1.1-1_all.deb

Uh, that was all easier than expected. Now we just have to install this package on our box and we are done:

root# dpkg -i ./linuxstatus_1.1-1_all.deb

Type 'linuxstatus' or 'ls -l /usr/bin/linuxstatus' to see if it worked. If you don't like your package any more, just type 'dpkg -r linuxstatus' and check again that the package is deinstalled. If you install a newer version you don't have to remove the old one first, thought.

If you are curious about the version numbering scheme and naming conventions for a Debian package, have a read at this section in The Debian Reference.