Many Linux distributions offer a large variety of software that is prepackaged for convenient installation, usually just a click (or a line on the command line) away.

Creating such software packages for the Debian and Ubuntu family of Linux operating systems is the topic of this course.

If you are a software developer, it might be the software you are writing yourself that you want to package. System administrators often need to package third-party software they distribute to their users and customers.

Typographic conventions

• Command names, input, and output appearing in the text are printed in a highlighted font.

• Commands that we can enter in our shell are prefixed by a dollar sign $, and the output it produces is not:

  $ dpkg --print-architecture
  

  Here is the output of the above command:

  amd64
  

• Placeholders that we are supposed to replace ourselves are indicated with angle brackets. In the file name <package-name>.postinst, replace <package-name> with your actual package name.

Overview of the course

We start with an overview of the ecosystem the Debian packages live in and then explore what files and metadata a Debian package is made of.

• The next chapters explore two ways to build Debian packages: with fpm, a quick (but sometimes a bit dirty) approach, and the standard Debian build system based on debhelper.

• Then, we cover a quick way to get started with creating a Debian package and later dive into more advanced topics, like building multiple binary packages from a single source package.

• At the end of the course, we briefly touch on Debian repositories and security aspects around the life cycle of a package.

sudo privilege

Note that we give you access to most of our code editors as a non-root user. Occasionally, you may need root privileges, say, to install a package that you built.

Note: When using sudo, please use the password user.