Packaging for PPA .deb Creation Missing Files

Question

So after floundering around from doc to doc I've latched onto and been following this tutorial: http://packaging.ubuntu.com/html/packaging-new-software.html

So I tried the steps in there and started running into troubles. Googling around has been largely unhelpful. I have a very standard autotools c++ project which builds a library and some executables. I wanted to make a libfoo-dev style package out of it and stick it up on a PPA.

To help show what I'm doing, I've stuck a script that does the steps proposed in the tutorial (so far as I am understanding them correctly..). Here's what I have: https://github.com/kevinkreiser/ppa-libprime-server

I have a bash script in there build.sh which has all the steps I've been doing. At first I was having trouble getting dh_* to build anything from my project until @sneetsher clued me into changing the rule file to do autoreconf. At this point my only issues are W: libprime-server0: empty-binary-package and W: prime-server-bin: empty-binary-package.

And like it says, the problem is now that a couple of my packages don't have much of anything in them:

user@pc$ lesspipe libprime-server0_0.3.2-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb 
libprime-server0_0.3.2-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb:
 neues Debian-Paket, Version 2.0.
 Größe 2004 Byte: control-Archiv= 528 Byte.
     425 Byte,    12 Zeilen      control              
     160 Byte,     2 Zeilen      md5sums              
 Package: libprime-server0
 Source: libprime-server
 Version: 0.3.2-0ubuntu1
 Architecture: amd64
 Maintainer: Kevin Kreiser <kevinkreiser@gmail.com>
 Installed-Size: 26
 Section: contrib/libs
 Priority: optional
 Homepage: https://github.com/kevinkreiser/prime_server
 Description: Service oriented distributed computing API
  A set of APIs designed around the zeromq butterfly pattern
  specifically focused on servicing http requests

*** Contents:
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-04-21 11:48 ./
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-04-21 11:48 ./usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-04-21 11:48 ./usr/share/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-04-21 11:48 ./usr/share/doc/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-04-21 11:48 ./usr/share/doc/libprime-server0/
-rw-r--r-- root/root       167 2016-04-18 11:04 ./usr/share/doc/libprime-server0/changelog.Debian.gz
-rw-r--r-- root/root      1558 2016-04-15 09:46 ./usr/share/doc/libprime-server0/copyright

user@pc:~/sandbox/ppa-libprime-server/build$ lesspipe prime-server-bin_0.3.2-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb 
prime-server-bin_0.3.2-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb:
 neues Debian-Paket, Version 2.0.
 Größe 1994 Byte: control-Archiv= 517 Byte.
     437 Byte,    12 Zeilen      control              
     160 Byte,     2 Zeilen      md5sums              
 Package: prime-server-bin
 Source: libprime-server
 Version: 0.3.2-0ubuntu1
 Architecture: amd64
 Maintainer: Kevin Kreiser <kevinkreiser@gmail.com>
 Installed-Size: 26
 Depends: libprime-server0 (= 0.3.2-0ubuntu1)
 Section: contrib/misc
 Priority: optional
 Homepage: https://github.com/kevinkreiser/prime_server
 Description: Service oriented distributed computing executables
  A set of executables for use in running a distributed http service

*** Contents:
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-04-21 11:48 ./
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-04-21 11:48 ./usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-04-21 11:48 ./usr/share/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-04-21 11:48 ./usr/share/doc/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-04-21 11:48 ./usr/share/doc/prime-server-bin/
-rw-r--r-- root/root       167 2016-04-18 11:04 ./usr/share/doc/prime-server-bin/changelog.Debian.gz
-rw-r--r-- root/root      1558 2016-04-15 09:46 ./usr/share/doc/prime-server-bin/copyright

The first package does work if I re-name the files back to libprime-server1.install and libprime-server1.dirs. I haven't be able to figure out what I'm doing wrong with the -bin package. bzr asks about the type of package I am making and I choose l for library should I be choosing something else?

EDIT:

The whole thing works: https://launchpad.net/~kevinkreiser/+archive/ubuntu/prime-server

With the help of @sneetsher I was able to get all of this up on a ppa and working properly in trusty! I just want to thank @sneetsher for all of the help and patience along the way. Hopefully this script can help others looking to do something similar: https://github.com/kevinkreiser/ppa-libprime-server/blob/master/build.sh

Answer 1

Well, I could test it on Ubuntu 14.04 and (with last commit) in Ubuntu 16.04.

• As you are new to packaging, it better to enable the verbose debhelper output. Uncomment export DH_VERBOSE=1 in the rules file.

• The package seems to depend on autoreconf not just automake/autotools. So change the rules main line to:

  %:
      #dh $@ --with autotolls-dev
      dh $@ --parallel --list-missing --with autoreconf
  

  and add dh-autoreconf to build dependencies in control file.

  So you are now longer need to pre-generate the auto build files by running ./autogen.sh manually. Keep in mind that every thing should be done through rules file, otherwise it will fail when it is built on PPA server with clean source tree.

• One of the tests fails, I go around by skipping them. overriding the dh_auto_test. So I add this to the rules file:

  override_dh_auto_test:
      echo skip auto-test
  

  leave it later to be fixed.

• For the empty libprime-server package, this is because it's has a wrong name.

  libprime-server in control file and libprime-server1 with 1 in others (like libprime-server1.install)

• Yes, lintian (QA tool) raises that warning because it expect to be the major version of the package. Yes, it should be ok to rename it to libprime-server0. There is only one note, you have to clean up the build tree from the previous build. So delete debian/libprime-server1 folder & try rebuild again.

  You can add as many packages as you want, see updated files below.

• Yes, dependencies should include the binary package, libprime-server0. The source package libprime-server it is not a dependency on any.

• I wasn't using your script to build, I was using another manual work-flow (Download original zip archive, extract it, add debian folder, build using debuild). I couldn't reproduce same issue as that one of empty binary packages.

  I could reproduce it with build.sh. The problem, you have changed the full debian/:

  rm -rf libprime-server/debian
  cp -rp ../debian libprime-server
  

  but committed only one file

  bzr add debian/source/format
  

  to fix it, commit the whole folder:

  bzr add debian
  

  bzr builddeb seems to use only the commit/tag (with Debian label) files, not the current working tree.

Here are the files I have changed:

1. debian/rules

   #!/usr/bin/make -f
   # -*- makefile -*-
   
   # Uncomment this to turn on verbose mode.
   export DH_VERBOSE=1
   
   %:
       #dh $@  --with autotools-dev
       dh $@ --parallel --list-missing --with autoreconf
   
   override_dh_auto_test:
       echo skip auto-test
   

2. debian/control

   Source: libprime-server
   Priority: optional
   Maintainer: Kevin Kreiser <kevinkreiser@gmail.com>
   Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 9), autotools-dev, dh-autoreconf, libcurl4-openssl-dev, libzmq3-dev
   Standards-Version: 3.9.5
   Section: libs
   Homepage: https://github.com/kevinkreiser/prime_server
   Vcs-Git: git://github.com/kevinkreiser/prime_server.git
   
   Package: libprime-server-dev
   Section: contrib/libdevel
   Architecture: any
   Depends: libprime-server0 (= ${binary:Version}), ${misc:Depends}
   Description: Service oriented distributed computing API
    A set of APIs designed around the zeromq butterfly pattern
    specifically focused on servicing http requests
   
   Package: libprime-server0
   Section: contrib/libs
   Architecture: any
   Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}
   Description: Service oriented distributed computing API
    A set of APIs designed around the zeromq butterfly pattern
    specifically focused on servicing http requests
   
   Package: prime-server-bin
   Section: contrib/misc
   Architecture: any
   Depends: libprime-server0 (= ${binary:Version}), ${misc:Depends}
   Description: Service oriented distributed computing API
    A set of APIs designed around the zeromq butterfly pattern
    specifically focused on servicing http requests
   

3. libprime-server1.install is renamed to libprime-server0.install

4. libprime-server1.dir is renamed to libprime-server0.dir

5. Create prime-server-bin.dirs

   usr/bin
   

6. Create prime-server-bin.install

   usr/bin/*
   

7. build.sh

   #!/bin/bash
   
   set -e
   
   rm -rf build
   mkdir build
   pushd build
   
   #get prime_server software
   #sudo apt-get install autoconf automake libtool make gcc-4.9 g++-4.9 lcov
   sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libzmq3-dev
   git clone --branch 0.3.2 --recursive  https://github.com/kevinkreiser/prime_server.git
   tar pczf prime_server.tar.gz prime_server
   rm -rf prime_server
   
   #start building the package
   sudo apt-get install dh-make dh-autoreconf bzr-builddeb
   bzr dh-make libprime-server 0.3.2 prime_server.tar.gz
   rm -rf libprime-server/debian
   cp -rp ../debian libprime-server
   pushd libprime-server
   bzr add debian
   bzr commit -m "Initial commit of Debian packaging."
   bzr builddeb -- -us -uc
   #TODO: sign the package
   popd
   
   #TODO: push the package to the ppa
   
   #TODO: make an ITP for inclusion in mainline
   
   popd