What is the simplest Debian Packaging Guide?

Question

I went to the Ubuntu wiki but got confused,there were too many ways.Please tell me an easy guide to debian packaging.

Answer 1

This is a good HOWTO for creating a basic .deb file. It is suitable for creating .debs for personal use but not stringent enough if you want to the package to be included in Debian/Ubuntu - for that you should read the Debian New Maintainer's Guide and/or the Ubuntu Packaging Guide (which I believe you've already tried).

A good tool for checking your .deb file for compliance is lintian (installable from the repositories).

There were two sessions here in the Ask Ubuntu chatrooms.

The Basics of Packaging on Ubuntu (Packaging: Part 1)

Ubuntu Packaging for Launchpad PPAs (Packaging: Part 2)

Answer 2

What parts are you having trouble with? Although complicated, the guide seemed quite clear when I was following it.

Quick Summary:

• Extract source .tar.gz
• Run dh_make
• Edit debian files
• Run debuild

Answer 3

The very easiest way to package something is to use checkinstall.

Answer 4

You can even use dpkg-deb for creating simple packages.

Here's a nice tutorial from Ubuntuforums.

Answer 5

We posted the simplest how-to example for packaging here, things can get much more complicated with an upstream or opensource package but if it is your own simple app its very simple.

http://developer.ubuntu.com/2012/02/how-to-prepare-a-compiled-application-for-ubuntu-software-center/

Here we package the text game dungeon with an icon and install into /opt