Chapter C. Source packages (from old Packaging Manual)

118

1 Untar the tarfile, which will create a

.orig

directory.

2 Rename the

.orig

directory to

package

version

.

3 Create the subdirectory

debian

at the top of the source tree.

4 Apply the diff using

patch  p0

.

5 Untar the tarfile again if you want a copy of the original source code alongside the De 

bianised version.

It is not possible to generate a valid Debian source archive without using

dpkg source

. In

particular, attempting to use

diff

directly to generate the

.diff.gz

file will not work.

C.4.1 Restrictions on objects in source packages

The source package may not contain any hard links

5 6

, device special files, sockets or setuid

or setgid files.

7

The source packaging tools manage the changes between the original and Debianised source

using

diff

and

patch

. Turning the original source tree as included in the

.orig.tar.gz

into the debianised source must not involve any changes which cannot be handled by these

tools. Problematic changes which cause

dpkg source

to halt with an error when building

the source package are:

  Adding or removing symbolic links, sockets or pipes.

  Changing the targets of symbolic links.

  Creating directories, other than

debian

.

  Changes to the contents of binary files.

Changes which cause

dpkg source

to print a warning but continue anyway are:

  Removing files, directories or symlinks.

8

  Changed text files which are missing the usual final newline (either in the original or the

modified source tree).

Changes which are not represented, but which are not detected by

dpkg source

, are:

  Changing the permissions of files (other than

debian/rules

) and directories.

The

debian

directory and

debian/rules

are handled specially by

dpkg source

  before

applying the changes it will create the

debian

directory, and afterwards it will make

debian

/rules

world executable.

5

This is not currently detected when building source packages, but only when extracting them.

6

Hard links may be permitted at some point in the future, but would require a fair amount of work.

7

Setgid directories are allowed.

8

Renaming a file is not treated specially   it is seen as the removal of the old file (which generates a warning,

but is otherwise ignored), and the creation of the new one.