For the Portland BSP, pre-configured cloud instances are provided that use schroot as a build environment.

For information on how to set up schroot on your own system, see mk-sbuild.

Using schroot to build packages

To see the list of available chroots, run:

schroot -l

To enter a copy of the chroot, run:

schroot -u root -c CHROOT_NAME

where CHROOT_NAME is the chroot you created earlier (e.g. unstable-amd64, unstable-i386, etc). From here, you can install deps:

apt-get build-dep PACKAGE

where PACKAGE is the package you want to work on. When you're ready to build packages, switch to a non-root user, and do what you need to do:

su builder
apt-get source PACKAGE
cd PACKAGE-*
dch -i
play!
debuild -uc -us

When you're ready for a source build:

debuild -S -uc -us

This will generate a .dsc file, which you give to sbuild (see next section).

Using sbuild

To use sbuild, you'll need a source package (with a .dsc file -- see above). Outside your chroots, you can build using sbuild via:

sbuild -A -d CHROOT_NAME PACKAGE*.dsc

And everything will happen automatically.