Unable to create custom debian package

Question

We are trying to create a custom debian package and trying to create custom apt-get repository. For this we did the following:

1. In ~ directory extracted the source file called monitor-0.1+monitor1.0.0.tar.gz
2. cd monitor-0.1+monitor1.0.0
3. then we run this command dh_make -e [email protected] -f ../monitor-0.1+monitor1.0.0.tar.gz
4. It created debian folder and changed control file and changelog file

5. The control file is as follows:

   Source: monitor Section: base Priority: extra Maintainer: root Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 8.0.0) Standards-Version: 3.9.2 Package: monitor Architecture: any Depends: mono-runtime, ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends} Description: Monitor tool

6. Then in ~/monitor-0.1+monitor1.0.0 directory we executed this command: dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

After execution in ~ it created following files

monitor_0.1+monitor1.0.0-1_amd64.changes
monitor_0.1+monitor1.0.0-1_amd64.deb
monitor_0.1+monitor1.0.0-1.debian.tar.gz
monitor_0.1+monitor1.0.0-1.dsc

Then we tried installing this deb package and also tried extracting this monitor_0.1+monitor1.0.0-1_amd64.deb file it does'nt have monitor directory it only have /usr/share/doc/monitor folder.

Can anyone please guide us on this. We are first time doing this.

Thanks

Answer 1

I've found that, it is much easier to install .deb packages using gdebi. You can install gdebi with the following command:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gdebi

You don't need to extract the .deb file to install it. To install the .deb file, navigate to the folder containing the file using cd, for example:

cd ~/monitor-0.1+monitor1.0.0

or . . .

cd ~/

Then, run:

sudo chmod +x monitor_0.1+monitor1.0.0-1_amd64.deb

. . . to make the file executable. Then, run:

sudo gdebi monitor_0.1+monitor1.0.0-1_amd64.deb

After the package loads in gdebi, you may need to click install. If gdebi shows the option to reinstall the package, your job is done.