Debian New Maintainers' Guide

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 1998-2002 Josip Rodin.

This document may be used under the terms the GNU General Public License version 2 or higher.

This document was made using with these two documents as examples:

Making a Debian Package (AKA the Debmake Manual), copyright © 1997 Jaldhar Vyas.

The New-Maintainer's Debian Packaging Howto, copyright © 1997 Will Lowe.

Contents

• 1 Getting started The Right Way
• 1.1 Programs you need for development
• 1.2 Other information
• 2 First steps
• 2.1 Choose your program
• 2.2 Get the program, and try it out
• 2.3 Package name and version
• 2.4 Initial "debianization"
• 3 Modifying the source
• 3.1 Installation in a subdirectory
• 3.2 Differing libraries
• 4 Required stuff under debian/
• 4.1 `control' file
• 4.2 `copyright' file
• 4.3 `changelog' file
• 4.4 `rules' file
• 5 Other files under debian/
• 5.1 README.Debian
• 5.2 conffiles.ex
• 5.3 cron.d.ex
• 5.4 dirs
• 5.5 docs
• 5.6 emacsen-*.ex
• 5.7 init.d.ex
• 5.8 manpage.1.ex, manpage.sgml.ex
• 5.9 menu.ex
• 5.10 watch.ex
• 5.11 ex.package.doc-base
• 5.12 postinst.ex, preinst.ex, postrm.ex, prerm.ex
• 6 Building the package
• 6.1 Complete rebuild
• 6.2 Quick rebuild
• 7 Checking the package for errors
• 8 Uploading the package
• 9 Updating the package
• 9.1 New Debian revision
• 9.2 New upstream release
• 9.3 Verifying package upgrades
• 10 Where to ask for help

Debian New Maintainers' Guide