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Please keep in mind that this is meant as a quick howto for how to build private backports and is not the way we expect from official backports for backports.debian.org. For official backports, see this article.

Here we take the example of the package coreutils, from which we want to install a newer release availaible in sid/experimental. If the package you're looking for not available in Sid, but in a Ubuntu PPA, you can have a look at CreatePackageFromPPA.

We don't need to be root here except the first and last steps.

Another method for backporting a sid package to testing or stable is described in this section of the Debian Unstable page in the Wiki.

Install Debian packaging tools

sudo apt-get install packaging-dev debian-keyring devscripts equivs

Find out which version is available in the Debian archive

$ rmadison coreutils --architecture amd64
coreutils  | 8.23-4        | oldstable  | amd64
coreutils  | 8.26-3        | stable     | amd64
coreutils  | 8.30-3        | testing    | amd64
coreutils  | 8.30-3        | unstable   | amd64

Download the .dsc file from the sid release

From your Web browser at http://packages.debian.org/sid/coreutils, look at the .dsc file and copy the link location

dget -x http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/c/coreutils/coreutils_8.30-3.dsc

Note: If the above command complains about your ~/.gnupg directory not being found, run gpg -k to initialize the GnuPG directory before retrying.

Or, alternatively, add sid to your sources.list, run apt update, download the source using the command below,

apt source -t sid coreutils

Install build dependencies

cd coreutils-*/
sudo mk-build-deps --install

This will install a package named coreutils-build-deps depending on the listed build dependencies. If you remove this package later, the actual build dependencies will be marked as "automatically installed and no longer needed" and can be cleared with apt autoremove.

Indicate in the changelog a backport revision number

dch --bpo

This will add something like ~bpo9+ to the package version number. The tilde ~ makes the package inferior in version, which should allow a proper package upgrade when you upgrade to the next Debian release (i.e. your package will be replaced with the official Debian package).

Test if we can successfully build the package

fakeroot debian/rules binary

If this should fail with a missing file, apt-file may be useful in locating the dependency you require.

Build a package properly , without GPG signing the package

dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc

Install and enjoy!

sudo apt install ../coreutils_*_*.deb

Go further

You could have a look BuildingFormalBackports and contribute your backport to Debian as explained here: http://backports.debian.org/Contribute/


CategoryPackaging