Introduction

I assume that an empty package is the easiest package.

One easy tool for creating small packages is equivs.

Here we will see how to create easily an empty debian binary package.

first empty package

equivs-control

equivs-control generate a file which is close to debian/control in a debian source package.

$ equivs-control package-minimal
$ ls
package-minimal

You have to edit the file to modify and uncomment some lines.

$ more package-minimal 
Package: package-minimal
Version: 1.0
Maintainer: a a <a@a.a>

equivs-build

You can then create an empty debian binary package

$ equivs-build package-minimal 
$ ls
package-minimal  package-minimal_1.0_all.deb

you can control that it is lintian clean !

$ lintian package-minimal_1.0_all.deb
$

installing the package

You have to be root to use dpkg -i

# dpkg -i p*.deb

But every on can use aptitude show

$ aptitude show package-minimal
Package: package-minimal                 
New: yes
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 1.0

What next

You can package ?some files

The is also ?CreateDummyPackage

documentation