Ubuntu: Questions and Answers (2014)

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Answer by andrewsomething

What follows is a basic example of how a source package for a python script might look. While most of the packaging tutorials are a bit complex, they can really help if you hit a problem. That said, I first learned the basics of Debian packaging by simply looking at Debian packages. apt-get source something similar and learn by example.

Here's your basic source package layout:

my-script/

-- myScript

-- debian/

-- changelog

-- copyright

-- compat

-- rules

-- control

-- install

Run dch --create in the directory to create a properly formatted debian/changelog entry.

debian/copyright should look like:

Format: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/

Upstream-Name: myScript

Upstream-Contact: Name, <email@address>

Files: *

Copyright: 2011, Name, <email@address>

License: (GPL-2+ | LGPL-2 | GPL-3 | whatever)

Full text of licence.

.

Unless there is a it can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses

debian/compat can just be: 7

debian/rules:

#!/usr/bin/make -f

%:

dh $@ --with python2

debian/control:

Skip code block

Source: my-script

Section: python

Priority: optional

Maintainer: Name, <email@address>

Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7),

python (>= 2.6.6-3~)

Standards-Version: 3.9.2

X-Python-Version: >= 2.6

Package: my-script

Architecture: all

Section: python

Depends: python-appindicator, ${misc:Depends}, ${python:Depends}

Description: short description

A long description goes here.

.

It can contain multiple paragraphss

debian/install:

myScript usr/bin/

Now build it with debuild --no-tgz-check

This will create a functional deb package. Lintian is going to throw a few warnings regarding the lack of an orig.tar.gz, but unless you plan on creating a proper upstream project that makes tarball releases you'll probably just want to ignore that for now.