When you seriously think about packaging as new comer to Debian, please read the official documentation :
the Debian New Maintainers' Guide -- tutorial for simple package
Debian Policy -- guiding rules
Developers Reference -- advanced guide etc.
Introduction to Debian Packaging
Why programs should be packaged:
- You want the program to be included in Debian.
- The packaging system takes care of the old version
- You want to install programs on severall computers.
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.
the packaging guide at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/
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
?Adding and removing diversions
?How to split a package into smaller packages
RPM - Converting a .RPM into .DEB - generally leads to bad results
Creating package without some particular architectures - for easy porting
External useful links
http://qref.sourceforge.net/Debian/reference/ch-package.en.html
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ and package apt-howto
Useful pages
See also:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-debpkg.html : creating debian packages - high-level description of debian packaging .
http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/prospective : requested packages, and packages being worked on.
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/336 Rolling your own debian packages.
PackageConfigUpgrade : propose a new way to smoothly handle configuration upgrades during package upgrades
?EtchTransitionalPackages
deb files
Autobuilding non-free packages: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.announce/997
CategoryPackageManagement CategoryPackaging