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debhelper
Debhelper is a tool used in debian/rules files to ease package-building. It replaces CDBS as Debian's recommended build system.
The terms "debhelper" and "dh" are sometimes used interchangeably. But dh is technically just the most visible part of debhelper, and people sometimes distinguish between "classic debhelper" (before version 7) vs. "dh" (Debhelper 7+).
Documentation
Manual pages: debhelper(7) dh(1)
Finding out how it works
dh prints the commands that it executes.
If you add export DH_VERBOSE=1 to debian/rules, the debhelper commands will print more information about what they are doing.
You can run dh <target> --no-act for each <target> you want (build, clean, binary etc.) to see what dh would run for that target.
Why does this page exist
ZugSchlus stumbled upon helpful snippets by wRAR on debian-mentors and wanted to put them on the Wiki.