Creating
a Debian Package from source
Debian makes it very easy
to build its packages from source code:
- Enter "deb-src"
lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list file, to make these just
duplicate the deb lines with deb-src in front instead. Then
update your apt package listing with "apt-get update".
- Install
the following packages: dpkg-dev, build-essential,fakeroot.
#apt-get install dpkg-dev build-essential fakeroot
- Get the
source package using "apt-get source packagename" where "packagename"
is the name of your source package or any of the binary
packages it produces. This will download the orig.tar.gz,
diff.gz and dsc source files for your package, and unpack
and patch the source code in a new source directory.
- Check
the Build-Depends list in the dsc file, and make sure you
have all of those packages installed. Also, make sure you
do not have any of the packages in the Build-Conflicts list,
if there is one.
- cd to
the source directory and type (as root) "debian/rules
binary" (or as non-root) "fakeroot debian/rules binary".
This will automatically go through all of the steps
necessary to build your package.
Optimization for Debian
Package
You can often increase the performance of an
application considerably by building it with optimization, which
is done by setting compiler flags. An aggressive optimization
setting is "-O6 -mcpu=whatever" where "whatever" is your target
processor, but beware such aggressive optimization can lead to
errors! See the gcc man page for details. The debian/rules
file is usually where you want to set the optimization flags,
typically using the CFLAGS variable in the configure line, e.g.
"CFLAGS='-O6 -mcpu=ev56' ./configure <configure flags>", this is
done between steps 3 and 5 above.
Reference
Links
http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-pkg_basics.en.html
http://checkinstall.izto.org/
http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/jcn/documentation/html-only/packaging.html
