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Comment by secondcoming | Hacker News Reader

It's easier to compile the linux kernel from scratch than it is to build a debian package from scratch.

It's mind-blowing how complicated it is; at the end of the day it's just an archive. I hate having to do it.

I store files in an appropiate strcture in my repo in a "src" folder, eg "src/usr/bin/myprog", "src/etc/cron.daily/myprog.cron" etc

Then I have a "src/DEBIAN" folder with a control file and maybe things like conffiles, postinst, etc.

Control file looks like

  Package: mypackage
  Version: 1.0.__datestamp__
  Architecture: all
  Maintainer: My Name <my.name@email.com>
  Depends: perl, libcgi-pm-perl, libtimedate-perl, apache2
  Section: web
  Priority: optional
  Installed-Size: 1000
  Description: My fun package which does good stuff
   Do wonderful things like existing

sed replaces the __datestamp__ line with yyyy.mm.dd.hh.mm.ss, then

  fakeroot dpkg-deb --build ./src

builds a deb.

(I have a larger script which does things like checking out from git, tagging, etc)

Actually it is not that hard:

  - default: https://vaporup.github.io/books/the-pragmatic-sysadmin/debian-packaging/
  -   quick: https://nfpm.goreleaser.com/usage/

Read the official documentation instead of random blogs.

Official documentation is a problem. It is aimed at Debian maintainers building a fully policy compliant package that could be accepted to the official repository. You don't need any of that crap for making a .deb package. It puts off people from creating Debian packages for their own programs or private use.

Interesting, thanks. I'll give it a read.

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