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I'd like to be able to create a package that doesnt contain any code or programs itself, but instead installs other packages that exist in the repositories onto a computer, sort of how the ubuntu-restricted-extras package does?

1 Answer 1

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A meta-package like this can be created with a tool called equivs which will create a package with just dependency information.

First, create a directory:

mkdir my-metapackage
cd my-metapackage/

Now run the program:

equivs-control ns-control

It will create a file called ns-control, open this file with your text editor. The control file that you generate should have its Depends or Recommends lines modified to depend on the packages that you want installed:

Section: misc
Priority: optional
Standards-Version: 3.9.1

Package: my-metapackage
Version: 1.0   
Depends: openssh-server, gedit
Description: This package installes an ssh server and a text editor
 The Long description of this package ends with a newline!

(Just an example, you should include more information)

And finally, build the package by running

equivs-build ns-control

Your package is located at my-metapackage/my-metapackage_1.0_all.deb.

If you wish to also create a source package, the --full option can be passed to equivs-build, e.g. equivs-build --full ns-control. This will use debuild & also create .dsc & .tar.gz files.

To create a source .changes file that you can upload to a PPA, extract & build the source package with

dpkg-source -x my-metapackage_1.0.dsc
cd my-metapackage-1.0
debuild -S

If the Maintainer that you set in ns-control matches your GPG key, it should build & sign the my-metapackage_1.0_source.changes file for you to dput to your PPA

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  • Thanks much. I will most likely test this later, but so far, the instructions worked. :)
    – Thomas Ward
    Apr 4, 2011 at 4:03
  • 2
    It works perfectly! Apr 4, 2011 at 4:09
  • Thanks for the answer, ajmitch, but just because reasons, I"m going to point out that if you have a ~/.devscripts file and specifically define a different GPG key to use in the devscripts file, it will OVERRIDE the dpkg/debuild process and have it use the specific GPG key specified in .devscripts. Just as a noteworthy point for the last sentence in your answer.
    – Thomas Ward
    Sep 9, 2013 at 17:00
  • I noticed that putting the packages under Depends: makes installation good if and only if packages are there; it doesn't installs them if they're not on my machine. To install them, I used Provides instead and it works like a charm. See my code (just changed it): github.com/palladius/debian-packages/blob/master/…
    – Riccardo
    May 18, 2017 at 16:44

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