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

Is the subject project this one github.com/kevinkreiser/prime_server? — user.dz, Apr 15 '16 at 20:59
@sneetsher yep thats the one. might there be something wrong with the way i've setup autotools that is breaking the packaging tools? — Kevin Kreiser, Apr 16 '16 at 4:19
so i've gotten around the original issue and updated the question above to reflect that. i'm now at the point where the contents of the packages aren't quite right despite it configuring, building and testing fine — Kevin Kreiser, Apr 18 '16 at 15:12
I tried to build it to see its installation structure, but I got a make error. submitted a report here. — user.dz, Apr 19 '16 at 9:34
This should be fixed now, I would greatly appreciate it if you gave it another go! Thanks again for your help! — Kevin Kreiser, Apr 19 '16 at 15:41

user.dz · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-22 12:48:13Z

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:

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

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

libprime-server1.install is renamed to libprime-server0.install
libprime-server1.dir is renamed to libprime-server0.dir
Create prime-server-bin.dirs
```
usr/bin
```
Create prime-server-bin.install
```
usr/bin/*
```

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

what determins the package name? lintian complains that it doesnt match the soname (because its libprime_server.so.0.0.0) and suggests that i name the package libprime-server0 but doing this in the control file and renaming the .dirs and .install files create empty packages again. also i am building some executables, can i add a package to the control file like prime-server-bin and get those to land in there? — Kevin Kreiser, Apr 20 '16 at 11:56
ive pushed up the updates you suggested and they work great to build the library packages! i was wondering though, when we say in the dev package that it depends on the nondev package, should it refer to the nondev package via its package name. in other words should the depends line in the dev package be libprime-server1 instead of libprime-server: ? if its the package name that its referring to then it seems like it should right? — Kevin Kreiser, Apr 20 '16 at 12:20
@KevinKreiser, updated the answer to cover that too. I have only one thing that may be an issue as I'm not sure if Launchpad supports Git submodules. Try it and let me know. — user.dz, Apr 20 '16 at 12:53
@KevinKreiser, I copied your last debian folder as it is and works fine, libprime-server0 is not empty, it contains the .so lib. for section, I was wrong, updated answer and here full list of available sections: debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-subsections — user.dz, Apr 21 '16 at 14:32
@KevinKreiser, I've updated the answer, problem was with build.sh script. — user.dz, Apr 22 '16 at 11:25

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