Copy: adam.danischewski@gmail.com (Adam Danischewski)

Adam,

Building a package that meets the requirements for inclusion is typically a bit more involved than the instructions on that webpage, but it is a good start. (There is a different between a .deb that is sufficiently well built to
be installed and a .deb that is sufficiently well built to be included in an official Debian repository.)

The first thing you will want to do is upload your package to mentors.debian.net and look at the output (including the lintian output, which looks for common problems in packaging). Instructions are at:

https://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers/

That URL links to several documents that explain how to build a proper Debian package. Sometimes they can feel like drinking from a fire hydrant, partially because there are a number of hard rules for what must be included in a Debian package, but there are many different workflows that can be used to create a package that complies with those rules, so the documentation will often say, “Well, you could do it this way or you could do it that way or you could do it
this other way, and nobody agrees which is best.” If it feels too overwhelming at first, it is sometimes easiest to cut your teeth updating an existing package instead of trying to build an entire new package from scratch (that is how I got into packaging). To do so, think of any package in Debian that isn’t frequently updated as often as you like, and reach out to the existing maintainer to see if they would like some help with the next update.

Of the above documentation, these are the three I would most recommend to you.

https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/

https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/

https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debmake-doc/

If you don’t have any idea which workflow you prefer, and you have some familiarity with Git, I would recommend you take a look at git-buildpackage.

https://wiki.debian.org/PackagingWithGit

In regard to the question about the changelog, it is to document the changes made in the Debian packaging that has been released as an official part of Debian. As such, any changes you make prior to the package being accepted into Debian the first time should not be included. The first release of a package should contain a single changelog entry with the text “Initial release
(closes: #NNN)” with #NNN being the bug number of the ITP. For example, see the first entry for Privacy Browser:

https://salsa.debian.org/soren/privacybrowser/-/blob/master/debian/changelog? ref_type=heads

Note that debian/changelog is the Debian packaging changelog. The upstream changelog should be shipped in your package at /usr/share/doc/<package_name>/ changelog.gz, which is handled automatically by dh_installchangelogs as long as the changelog appears in the root of the upstream tarball with a common name.

Soren

On Wednesday, July 17, 2024 3:58:09 PM MST Adam Danischewski wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Adam Danischewski <adam.danischewski@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2024 at 6:57 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Looking for a mentor
To: Manuel Guerra <ar.manuelguerra@gmail.com>

Thanks Manuel, I managed to build a deb package, using:
HOWTO: Build debian packages for simple shell scripts | Packagecloud Blog <https://blog.packagecloud.io/how-to-build-debian-packages-for-simple-shell-sc
ripts/>

To build it, I clone the project from github, tar it (upstream tarball) and combine the debian dir:

git clone https://github.com/victrixsoft/bashbro.git --depth 1
rm -rf bashbro/.git
tar cvfz bashbro_1.04.orig.tar.gz bashbro/
## Add the debian directory to the source
mkdir bb_deb && cd bb_deb
git clone --branch debian_pkg https://github.com/victrixsoft/bashbro.git
mv bashbro/debian ../bashbro/
cd ../bashbro
debuild -us -uc

So, I've got a deb but I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm a little unsure what to do with the changelog,
I've made a few commits since the I originally submitted the ITP. Should I update the changelog,
or can I just leave it until it's in the system?

On Wed, Jul 17, 2024 at 11:06 AM Manuel Guerra <ar.manuelguerra@gmail.com>

wrote:

Adam,

Thanks for the quick response - yes I'd like to add the package to Debian. I have actually packaged it, but I really wasn't sure how the system worked.

This was very usefull for me: https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/packaging-tutorial/packaging-tutorial

Greetings,

Manuel Guerra

--

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--
Soren Stoutner
soren@debian.org
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