Penguicon 2008 : Packaging Jam

• Packaging What?
• I'm a developer, what's packaging have to do with me?
• I'm a sys admin...
• But I heard packaging is hard and complicated.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/GettingStarted
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide

sudo apt-get install build-essential devscripts debhelper dh-make diff patch gnupg fakeroot lintian linda pbuilder wget fakeroot cdbs patchutils

# Create your pbuilder environment (uses it's own sources; config in /etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc)
sudo pbuilder create --distribution gutsy --othermirror "deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy universe multiverse"

Add these lines to your `~/.bashrc`

export DEBEMAIL="your.email@host.com"
export DEBFULLNAME="First Last"

Then

source ~/.bashrc

Launchpad small bugs Bitesize tag

Example (Silly) Bug report

The description is misspelled in the xicc package. It should say "This utility lets you set an ICC *color* profile..."

First let's verify

apt-cache show xicc

Sure enough, the line is colour in the description. Let's fix it.

Remember those deb-src lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list file? Time to put it to use.

apt-get source xicc

Let's look at what we have here.

• original tarball
• .dsc file describing the package and giving md5sums for the source package
• .diff.gz file containing patches applied against the source code with the packaging information
• The modified source directory where our debian directory lives

Where to we fix our bug with the color spelling

cd xicc-0.2/debian/

The big daddy file giving us all the info you see in `apt-cache show xicc`

Notice the Description field. There's our spelling error.

While we're in here check out the other fields

• Source:
• Priority
• Maintainer
• Build-Depends

Let's fix our spelling of color.

Next we need to note what we changed and why. See the changelog file? It's got a very specific format and there's a shortcut to matching it:

dch -i

Gives us a skeleton. Should auto fill in the name/email from our export commands earlier.

Notice the version string

Add our message after the `*`

Corrected the goofy spelling of the word color. 

Time to put the tools to work to build our updates

debuild -S
# or if you don't have your gpg key setup
debuild -S -us -uc

GPG Sidenote

# This worked for me:
debuild -k<YourKeyID> -S

# put in ~.bashrc
# gpg key
export GPGKEY=$YOURGPGNUM

signfile xicc_0.2-3ubuntu1_source.changes Richard T Harding <rharding@mitechie.com>

Successfully signed dsc and changes files

Cool, now where did the files go?

View our debdiff file

cd ../
debdiff xicc_0.2-2.dsc xicc_0.2-3ubuntu1.dsc | less

Now let's save our debdiff to fix the bug

debdiff xicc_0.2-2.dsc xicc_0.2-3ubuntu1.dsc > xicc_0.2.3ubuntu1.debdiff

This can then be attached to the bug report for a MOTU to apply/commit.

Not so bad, notice the similarity to a diff in code terms.

Our next try is to update a package. The devs have released a new shiny version. Yes, we're still in pretend land

The patient: Brasero
Gutsy version: 0.6.1-0ubuntu1
Latest Stable Version: 0.7.1

dget -x http://people.ubuntu.com/~dholbach/motu/brasero_0.5.2-0ubuntu1.dsc 

Looking at the brasero/debian directory should look a little familiar.

wget http://people.ubuntu.com/~dholbach/motu/brasero-0.6.1.tar.gz

Unpack the new tarball and rename the new source tarball:

tar zxf brasero-0.6.1.tar.gz
mv brasero-0.6.1.tar.gz brasero_0.6.1.orig.tar.gz

Note the underscore instead of - and the orig in the filename

Why dupe all the work already done from the last version?

cp -r brasero-0.5.2/debian brasero-0.6.1/

cd brasero-0.6.1
dch -i

Using our uber cool `dch` shortcut. Let's make a note that we're upgrading to a new upstream version of the package and update the version string.

debuild -S

Should end up with files in dir above in particular

brasero_0.6.1-0ubuntu2.dsc

This is all well and good, but we can't install a .dsc file. Everyone knows we need a .deb file!

Remember our friend pbuilder to the rescue

Chroot environment that installs all the packages required for base Ubuntu install and the required deps.

sudo pbuilder --build brasero_0.6.1-0ubuntu2.dsc

Need sudo to build the chroot environment

Let's see what we have now:

ls /var/cache/pbuilder/result/
---------------------
brasero_0.6.1-0ubuntu2.diff.gz
brasero_0.6.1-0ubuntu2.dsc
brasero_0.6.1-0ubuntu2_i386.changes
brasero_0.6.1-0ubuntu2_i386.deb
brasero_0.6.1.orig.tar.gz   

Hey, there's a .deb we can now apt-get install (if we had the permissions and such)

• Updates can also be made with uupdate
• We've not gone into everything here. There's a LOT LOT more.
• Use launchpad and PPAs as a great place for learning and working on your packaging
• Get on the MOTU mailing list and irc channel Some really great people!
• Help out, start small, learn, and work on improving.
• Go do it, be a MOTU. Check out these checklist guides: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EfrainValles/MOTUJourney