Debian New Maintainers' Guide
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Debian New Maintainers' Guide

Josip Rodin

original contents 

Osamu Aoki

updated contents 

version 1.2.51

Copyright © 1998-2002 Josip Rodin

Copyright © 2005-2015 Osamu Aoki

Copyright © 2010 Craig Small

Copyright © 2010 Raphaël Hertzog

This document may be used under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or higher.

This document was made using these two documents as examples:

  • Making a Debian Package (AKA the Debmake Manual), copyright © 1997 Jaldhar Vyas.

  • The New-Maintainer's Debian Packaging Howto, copyright © 1997 Will Lowe.

    The rewrite of this tutorial document with updated contents and more practical examples is available as "Guide for Debian Maintainers". Please use this new tutorial as the primary tutorial document.

2022-07-21 13:08:39 UTC

Table of Contents

1. Getting started The Right Way
1.1. Social dynamics of Debian
1.2. Programs needed for development
1.3. Documentation needed for development
1.4. Where to ask for help
2. First steps
2.1. Debian package building workflow
2.2. Choose your program
2.3. Get the program, and try it out
2.4. Simple build systems
2.5. Popular portable build systems
2.6. Package name and version
2.7. Setting up dh_make
2.8. Initial non-native Debian package
3. Modifying the source
3.1. Setting up quilt
3.2. Fixing upstream bugs
3.3. Installation of files to their destination
3.4. Differing libraries
4. Required files under the debian directory
4.1. control
4.2. copyright
4.3. changelog
4.4. rules
4.4.1. Targets of the rules file
4.4.2. Default rules file
4.4.3. Customization of rules file
5. Other files under the debian directory
5.1. README.Debian
5.2. compat
5.3. conffiles
5.4. package.cron.*
5.5. dirs
5.6. package.doc-base
5.7. docs
5.8. emacsen-*
5.9. package.examples
5.10. package.init and package.default
5.11. install
5.12. package.info
5.13. package.links
5.14. {package.,source/}lintian-overrides
5.15. manpage.*
5.15.1. manpage.1.ex
5.15.2. manpage.sgml.ex
5.15.3. manpage.xml.ex
5.16. package.manpages
5.17. NEWS
5.18. {pre,post}{inst,rm}
5.19. package.symbols
5.20. TODO
5.21. watch
5.22. source/format
5.23. source/local-options
5.24. source/options
5.25. patches/*
6. Building the package
6.1. Complete (re)build
6.2. Autobuilder
6.3. debuild command
6.4. pbuilder package
6.5. git-buildpackage command and similar
6.6. Quick rebuild
6.7. Command hierarchy
7. Checking the package for errors
7.1. Suspicious changes
7.2. Verifying a package's installation
7.3. Verifying a package's maintainer scripts
7.4. Using lintian
7.5. The debc command
7.6. The debdiff command
7.7. The interdiff command
7.8. The mc command
8. Updating the package
8.1. New Debian revision
8.2. Inspection of the new upstream release
8.3. New upstream release
8.4. Updating the packaging style
8.5. UTF-8 conversion
8.6. Reminders for updating packages
9. Uploading the package
9.1. Uploading to the Debian archive
9.2. Including orig.tar.gz for upload
9.3. Skipped uploads
A. Advanced packaging
A.1. Shared libraries
A.2. Managing debian/package.symbols
A.3. Multiarch
A.4. Building a shared library package
A.5. Native Debian package
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     Chapter 1. Getting started The Right Way