Debian Packaging

Rebuilding a package

Process to simple repackage a debian package and push it to wmf apt repo.

Example: repackage python-libthumbor for debian stretch

1. Login to boron.eqiad.wmnet 2. As a user run the following to download python-libthumbor's source package:

$ apt-get source apt-get source libthumbor=1.3.2-0+wmf1

3. We should now have 3 files and 1 directory in our working directory:

 -rw-r--r--  1 user wikidev  15K Jul  6  2016 libthumbor_1.3.2.orig.tar.gz          -> source code of the upstream authors
 -rw-r--r--  1 user wikidev 1.2K Jul  6  2016 libthumbor_1.3.2-0+wmf1.dsc           -> meta file describing which files are around
 -rw-r--r--  1 user wikidev 2.4K Jul  6  2016 libthumbor_1.3.2-0+wmf1.debian.tar.xz -> Debian-specific changes
 drwxr-xr-x  6 user wikidev 4.0K Nov 20 14:11 libthumbor-1.3.2                      -> extracted source package

4. In the libthumbor-1.3.2/debian directory, we may find the following files:

  changelog -> records all changes and defines the version of the package
  compat -> a meta file used for automation of the package build
  control -> defines the binary package names and their relation to other packages (e.g. files needed to build and run the package)
  copyright -> decribes the license and the copyright holders
  docs -> this can be used to declare some files as documentation
  patches -> a directory of code changes done to the original tarball
  rules -> defines the package build process
  source -> a directory defining some details of how the source package is defined
  watch -> a meta file which contains information where to look for new releases (i.e. where to download a newer source)

5. Go to libthumbor-1.3.2

 $ sudo -H bash
 $ dch -i

6. We should see something like the following:

  libthumbor (1.3.2-0+wmf1+stretch1) stretch-wikimedia; urgency=low

   * Rebuild for stretch

  -- Effie Mouzeli <effie@wikimedia.org>  Tue, 20 Nov 2018 13:42:24 +0000

  libthumbor (1.3.2-0+wmf1) unstable; urgency=low

   * Initial release. (Closes: #783577)

  -- Gilles Dubuc <gilles@wikimedia.org>  Thu, 19 May 2016 15:30:16 +0000

TBA