Debian

Packaging, repository management, user environment setup, and more.

General Administration

Prepare a default home directory

# mkhomedir_helper $USER

Package Development

Preparing an environment

Everything needed to build debs as the distribution maintainers do.

Development packages

# apt install build-essential devscripts git-buildpackage

git-buildpackage cheatsheet

Clone from salsa:

gbp clone --pristine-tar https://salsa.debian.org/foo/foo.git

Generate a changelog entry:

gbp dch --ignore-branch

Build a package

gbp buildpackage --git-ignore-branch

Skip checks/tests

DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nocheck

GBP issues

gbp:error: upstream/... is not a valid treeish

If running gbp in a debianized source directory results in this error, try running gbp with --git-upstream-tree=branch (where branch is the branch being used)

Reference

• GBP Error: not a valid treeish

Reference

• Using Quilt - Debian Wiki
• Creating a personal apt repository using `dpkg-scanpackages` - Guy Rutenberg
• Diaspora/Packaging/Salsa - Debian Wiki

Package repositories

Generate the Packages file:

dpkg-scanpackages -m -a ppc64el pool/trixie/callisto | gzip -c > dists/trixie/callisto/binary-ppc64el/Packages.gz