How-To

Make binary .deb packages

The easiest way to illustrate how to do this is probably to dismantle an existing package, and then put it back together again.... So that's what we'll do now... First we'll need to grab a good example package... cd into somewhere sensible, then then

wget http://intimate.handhelds.org/debian/dists/unstable/main/binary-arm/x11/wmsmixer_0.5_arm.deb

OK.. next, we'll create a directory to work in.. as we're playing with the wmsmixer package, let's make call our dir 'wmsmixer'

mkdir wmsmixer && cd wmsmixer

Now let's extract the package we downloaded, and put it into some kind of order

ar -x ../wmsmixer_0.5_arm.deb: rm debian-binary; tar xvzf data.tar.gz && rm data.tar.gz; mkdir DEBIAN && cd DEBIAN; tar xvzf ../control.tar.gz && rm ../control.tar.gz

OK... now we've got a binary pacakge source tree... at any time we can turn this source tree into a package by cd-ing to the right place and using 'dpkg-deb -b wmsmixer wmsmixer_0.5_arm.deb' and it'll produce a .deb package for us. We can test that package out using 'dpkg -i <packagename>'

Now, let's have a closer look at what's in the package archive...

intimate:~/wmsmixer# find . -type f ./usr/lib/menu/wmsmixer ./usr/X11R6/bin/wmsmixer ./DEBIAN/control ./DEBIAN/postinst ./DEBIAN/postrm

We have only 5 files in this archive.. The wmsmixer binary itself in usr/X11R6/bin, the 'debian menu system' entry for wmsmixer in usr/lib/menu, and the package control files in the DEBIAN dir. In this archive, the postinst and postrm files simply call update-menus, which, providing that the debian menu package is installed will parse through /usr/lib/menu, and generate menus for any window managers that are installed. The format of the usr/lib/menu/wmsmixer file is fairly obvious if you look at it.. you can have multiple menu items in the same file BTW. (You can always do man menufileif you want to find out more)

Lastly is the 'control' file.. Let's take a look in there....

intimate:~/wmsmixer# cat DEBIAN/control Package: wmsmixer Priority: optional Version: 0.5 Architecture: arm Maintainer: James Conner <jim@secret.org.uk> Depends: libc6, xlibs Description: Dockapp mixer thing.. Looks quite nice

The format in the control file is fairly self explanitory. Packages may have Depends, Provides, Conflicts etc as fields. An empty field is not allowed. For example, if this package had no dependencies, then there should be no Depends: line. An empty line confuses the packaging system.

Let's change something in this package then... Let's change the location in the menus that wmsmixer will appear in... Here's the contents of usr/lib/menu/wmsmixer

intimate:~/wmsmixer# cat usr/lib/menu/wmsmixer ?package(wmsmixer):\ needs="x11"\ section="Apps/Sound"\ title="WMSmixer (Docked)"\ command="/usr/X11R6/bin/wmsmixer -s -w" ?package(wmmixer):\ needs="x11"\ section="Apps/Sound"\ title="WMSmixer"\ command="/usr/X11R6/bin/wmsmixer -s"

Edit the file so that both the section lines are changed from "Apps/Sound" to "Games/Toys".

Next we need to update the version number in the DEBIAN/control file so that the packaging system will recognise it as a new version. Edit the control file and change the Version: number from 0.5 to 0.5-1.

Next, we'll build our new package...

intimate:~# dpkg-deb -b wmsmixer wmsmixer_0.5-1_arm.deb dpkg-deb: building package `wmsmixer' in `wmsmixer_0.5-1_arm.deb'.

And finally, we'll test our new package...

intimate:~# dpkg -i ./wmsmixer_0.5-1_arm.deb (Reading database ... 8811 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace wmsmixer 0.5 (using ./wmsmixer_0.5-1_arm.deb) ... Unpacking replacement wmsmixer ... Setting up wmsmixer (0.5-1) ...

We have success!!!!

Well.. hopefully, that should get you all started making packages for yourselves. Don't forget to send the packages to one of the intimate developers so that everybody can enjoy your hard work. Thanks :)