Building Package on Debian/Ubuntu Server

Debian/Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distributions. Installing new package or program on Ubuntu is very easy. With apt or apt-get commands, the user can manage their installed package, install new packages, upgrade new versions, removed old packages, etc. However, there are a number of things you need to do to get started building package and developing for Ubuntu community. So I suggest you read this post carefully!

This post will explain how can we build our own Debian/Ubuntu package file and upload it to the server. This means that you can distribute your program to everybody via sudo apt-get install YOUR_PROGRAM command!

Getting Start

Generate KEY id.

Send KEY ID to Ubuntu server

Generate SSH key

Setting pbuilder up

Configure your LaunchPad account

Confirmation for LaunchPad

Upload SSH key to LaunchPad

Getting Start

Original document is available at http://packaging.ubuntu.com/singlehtml/index.html. Although it is very good reference, but the instruction explained in that document may be too complicated for the end-users. I boil it down and explain it in a way you can follow easily.

Generate KEY id.

1. Generate KEY id.

gpg --full-gen-key

2. Follows an interactive question.

Question 1:

Please select what kind of key you want:

   (1) RSA and RSA (default)

   (2) DSA and Elgamal

   (3) DSA (sign only)

   (4) RSA (sign only)

Your selection? 1

Question 2:

Please specify how long the key should be valid.

         0 = key does not expire

      <n>  = key expires in n days

      <n>w = key expires in n weeks

      <n>m = key expires in n months

      <n>y = key expires in n years

Key is valid for? (0) 0

Question 3:

Real name: Rangsiman Ketkaew

Email address: rangsiman1993@gmail.com

Comment:

You selected this USER-ID:

    "Rangsiman Ketkaew <rangsiman1993@gmail.com>"

Change (N)ame, (C)omment, (E)mail or (O)kay/(Q)uit? O

3. Check your KEY id

gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG

Output:

sec   rsa3072/TESTKEY112233 2019-05-23 [SC] [expires: XXXX-XX-XX]

      4C220144Fd0892C02CF337AC6F0BF90G43CDE61D

uid                 [ultimate] Rangsiman Ketkaew <rangsiman1993@gmail.com>

ssb   rsa3072/XXXXXXXXX 2019-05-23 [E] [expires: XXXX-XX-XX]

Send KEY ID to Ubuntu server

gpg --send-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com TESTKEY112233

Generate SSH key

1. To generate SSH key, use following command:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

2. Then you will ask where the ssh key fille will be saved, just enter the default setting.

Generating public/private rsa key pair.

Enter file in which to save the key (/home/nutt/.ssh/id_rsa):

3. Type and confirm your passphrase.

Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):

Enter same passphrase again:

4. Done!

Your identification has been saved in /home/rangsiman/.ssh/id_rsa.

Your public key has been saved in /home/rangsiman/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

The key fingerprint is:

SHA256:sdfsfsdfsfdsfsdfsfdsfsdfsfsfdsfdsdfsdfsdf rangsiman@Ubuntu

The key's randomart image is:

+---[RSA 2048]----+

|==*..            |

|++ B             |

| .O B .          |

| * X = B E       |

|+ X B B S .      |

| * = X . . .     |

|  + = .   .      |

|   +             |

|                 |

+----[SHA256]-----+

Setting pbuilder up

1. Execute following command

pbuilder-dist <release> create

where <release> is for example xenial, zesty, artful or in the case of Debian maybe sid or buster.

FYI: You can use following command to check Ubuntu code name:

lsb_release -a

Output:

No LSB modules are available.

Distributor ID: Ubuntu

Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS

Release:        18.04

Codename:       bionic

Configure your LaunchPad account

1. Go to https://launchpad.net/ and create your own account.

2. Confirmation e-mail will be sent to your e-mail.

3. Get back to the terminal. Check your KEY id using:

gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG

Output:

sec   rsa3072/TESTKEY112233 2019-05-23 [SC] [expires: XXXX-XX-XX]

      4C220144Fd0892C02CF337AC6F0BF90G43CDE61D

uid                 [ultimate] Rangsiman Ketkaew <rangsiman1993@gmail.com>

ssb   rsa3072/XXXXXXXXX 2019-05-23 [E] [expires: XXXX-XX-XX]

4. Submit SSH key to Ubuntu server:

gpg --send-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com TESTKEY112233

5. Go to https://launchpad.net/~/+editpgpkeys

6. Append your Key Fingerprint (a long one) to text box, for example,

4C220144Fd0892C02CF337AC6F0BF90G43CDE61D

7. Then click "Import Key".

Confirmation for LaunchPad

Ref: https://help.launchpad.net/ReadingOpenPgpMail

1. A confirmation e-mail will be sent to your e-mail.

2. In the e-mail there will be a long PGP KEY message like this:

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----

Version: GnuPG v1

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12334567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12334567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12334567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12334567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12334567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12334567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12334567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12334567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz12334567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

2. Open your terminal and create file call opgpm.txt.

vi opgpm.txt

3. Copy and paste the PGP message from the e-mail to the file.

4. Then execute the following command

gpg -d opgpm.txt

5. Output below confirms that a process is done successfully.

gpg: encrypted with 3072-bit RSA key, ID XXXXXXXXXXXX, created 2019-05-23

      "Rangsiman Ketkaew <rangsiman1993@gmail.com>"

Here are the instructions for confirming the OpenPGP key registration that we

received for use in Launchpad.

Requester details:

    User name    : Rangsiman

    Email address: rangsiman1993@gmail.com

Key details:

    Key type    : 3072R

    Fingerprint : 4C220144Fd0892C02CF337AC6F0BF90G43CDE61D

UIDs:

    rangsiman1993@gmail.com

Please go here to finish adding the key to your Launchpad account:

    https://launchpad.net/token/P70vdn4r4Vd03wmCnXnw

6. Then submit SSH key to Ubuntu server again.

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --send-keys TESTKEY112233

Upload SSH key to LaunchPad

1. Go to https://launchpad.net/~/+editsshkeys

2. Copy a key from ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and paste to text box and then click Import Public Key.

Configure the shell

1. Environment variable

export DEBFULLNAME="Rangsiman Ketkaew"

export DEBEMAIL="rangsiman1993@gmail.com"

2. Now save the file and either restart your terminal or run:

$ source ~/.bashrc

Prepare your program

1. In this post, I will use a simple program hello world as an example.

2. Download source code of GNU hello version 2.10 from its library.

wget -O hello-2.10.tar.gz "http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/hello-2.10.tar.gz"

2. Uncompress the tarball:

tar xf hello-2.10.tar.gz

cd hello-2.10

3. This application uses the autoconf build system so we want to run ./configure to prepare for compilation.

./configure

4. Compile program and install it. Binary executable file of hello program will be installed at /usr/local/bin/.

make

sudo make install

5. Test program by running:

hello

Build .deb file

The following content is proposed by https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=910717 .

1. Decide on the name of your package. Standard debian notation is all lowercase in the following format:

<project>_<major version>.<minor version>-<package revision>

For example, you could name your first package...

helloworld_2.10-1

3. Create a directory to make your package in. The name should be the same as the package name.

mkdir helloworld_2.10-1

4. Pretend that the packaging directory is actually the root of the file system. Put the files of your program where they would be installed to on a system.

mkdir helloworld_2.10-1/usr

mkdir helloworld_2.10-1/usr/local

mkdir helloworld_2.10-1/usr/local/bin

cp "~/Projects/Hello World/helloworld" helloworld_2.10-1/usr/local/bin

5. Now create a special metadata file with which the package manager will install your program...

mkdir helloworld_2.10-1/DEBIAN

gedit helloworld_2.10-1/DEBIAN/control

6. Put something like this in that file...

Package: helloworld

Version: 2.10-1

Section: base

Priority: optional

Architecture: i386

Depends: debhelper (>= 9)

Maintainer: Rangsiman Ketkaew <rangsiman1993@gmail.com>

Description: Hello World

 When you need some sunshine, just run this

 small program!

(the space before each line in the description is important)

6. Now you just need to make the package:

dpkg-deb --build helloworld_1.0-1

Done!

Tips

bzr-builddeb includes a plugin to create a new package from a template. The plugin is a wrapper around the dh_makecommand. Run the command providing the package name, version number, and path to the upstream tarball:

sudo apt-get install dh-make bzr-builddeb

bzr dh-make hello 2.10 hello-2.10.tar.gz

When it asks what type of package type s for single binary. This will import the code into a branch and add the debian/packaging directory. Have a look at the contents. Most of the files it adds are only needed for specialist packages (such as Emacs modules) so you can start by removing the optional example files:

$ cd hello/debian

$ rm *ex *EX

Rangsiman Ketkaew

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