Creating debian packages

2 minute read

This guide is a brief tutorial on creating and using a debian package.

To start with, create a folder ~/debpkgs to work out of.

Inside this folder, we can create the package we actually want. We name these packages as follows:

<name>_<version>_<arch>
- <name> can use '-' characters to split the name up
- <version> will be something like 1.0
- <arch> will be the machine architecture
  - e.g amd64, arm64 etc
  - use all if the package can be installed on any architecture

say-hello example

Create a package with the file structure:

| - debpkgs/
  | - say-hello_1.0_all/
    | - DEBIAN/
    | - usr/
      | - bin/

we use the DEBIAN directory to configure our package
all other directories mimic where we want to install files on the target machine
- in this case, we will install something in /usr/bin
- other common locations we might use are:
  - /opt/<vendor>/ for vendor specific files
  - /usr/lib for installing shared object .so files

Inside the say-hello_1.0_all/usr/bin directory, create a file hello.sh and place the following contents inside:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Hello everyone"

Make it executable for anyone:

chmod 777 hello.sh

Inside the say-hello_1.0_all/DEBIAN directory, add a file called control with the following content:

Package: say-hello
Version: 1.0
Architecture: all
Essential: no
Priority: optional
Depends: 
Maintainer: Your Name
Description: Says hello in the terminal

The control file sets up the package definitions.

Package specifies the actual package name
- After installing the pacakge, we can remove it with sudo apt remove say-hello, where say-hello is provided here
Essential is always no and Priority is usually optional unless your package is part of the operating system
Depends allows us to name other packages which this package depends on

Our package structure will now look like:

| - debpkgs/
  | - say-hello_1.0_all/
    | - DEBIAN/
    | | - control
    | - usr/
      | - bin/
        | - hello.sh

If we move to the debpkgs directory, we can build the package:

dpkg-deb --build say-hello_1.0_all

Which builds the package file say-hello_1.0_all.deb.

Inspecting a package

The easiest way to inspect a package is to call:

dpkg --info say-hello_1.0_all.deb

This will print out the info in the control file, with some additional information like archive size.

Installing a package with dpkg

To install, call:

sudo dpkg --install say-hello_1.0_all.deb

Now you should be able to call hello.sh from any terminal on your computer:

> hello.sh
Hello everyone

To uninstall, use the package name say-hello:

sudo dpkg --remove say-hello

Installing a package with apt

Installing with apt can be nice, because the apt tools will find your dependencies for you (if you listed any in the control file).