When you seriously think about packaging as new comer to Debian, please read the official documentation :

Contents

  1. Introduction to Debian Packaging
  2. Building debian packages
  3. other informations

Introduction to Debian Packaging

Why programs should be packaged:

First read the excellent Introduction to Debian Packaging.

There is another interesting document on how to package for Debian

There is also an intresting package : packaging-tutorial by Lucas Nussbaum

A very basic introduction of equivs to create :

Please note some Ubuntu resources may be quite useful too.

Building debian packages

To make sure that a debian package meets all build dependencies and is not influenced by anything specific to the user's environment, packages should be built in a chroot environment. Tools like pbuilder can be used for this.

When working on a package, a faster rebuild can be done with 'debuild'. But then, all build-dependencies must be satisfied in the installation where the package is built. All necessary packages can be installA very basic introduction to create an ?empty package or a package with ?just a pdf file ed automatically with apt-get build-dep. A complete example for building the foo package looks like this: 

 $ apt-get source foo
 $ cd foo-0.0.1
 $ sudo apt-get build-dep foo
 $ debuild -i -us -uc -b

This is usually enough for you to backport packages.

other informations

Advanced Packaging Procedures

Useful pages

See also:

CategoryPackageManagement CategoryPackaging