Problems packing a .deb from autotools. (checkinstall, debhelper, ...)

Question

I'm currently building a large project that contains sources written in few languages such as C,C++ & Python. I recently managed to (painfuly) handle autotools to make a proper install. Next step is to create .deb because our project is meant to run on debian stretch.

I tried several ways to do this but i can't get it working whether the way.

Tree .deb generated by checkinstall :

 unpack/ ├── etc │   └── nina │   ├── auto_blacklist.txt │   ├── blacklist.txt │   ├── conf │   ├── keywords.txt │   ├── rubbish_links.txt │   └── whitelist.txt └── usr ├── local │   ├── bin │   │   ├── geckodriver │   │   └── nina │   ├── lib │   │   └── python2.7 │   │   └── dist-packages │   │   ├── nina.py │   │   ├── nina_py_installed_files.txt │   │   ├── Uinput_wrapping_module-2.0.egg-info │   │   └── uinput_wrapping_module.so │   └── share │   └── man │   └── man1 │   └── nina.1.gz └── share └── doc └── nina ├── COPYING ├── doc │   ├── Doxyfile │   └── nina.1 ├── README └── README.md

Tree .deb generated by debhelper (v9):

unpack/ ├── etc │   └── nina │   ├── auto_blacklist.txt │   ├── blacklist.txt │   ├── conf │   ├── keywords.txt │   ├── rubbish_links.txt │   └── whitelist.txt └── usr ├── bin │   └── nina ├── lib │   └── python2.7 │   └── dist-packages │   └── nina.py └── share ├── doc │   └── nina │   ├── changelog.Debian.gz │   └── copyright └── man └── man1 └── nina.1.gz

As you can see it's not quite the same (sic). I'm more or less understanding what checkinstall does : it runs make install commands and just get files outputs to place it where it's installing on MY machine. debhelper seems to be a way more proper tool here. (installing in /usr/lib and not /usr/local/lib, allow us to sign packages & so on.) and i'd prefer to use it but it's not working as expected to do.

And on huge plus on debhelper way is that it's actually handling dependancies specified in debian/control and stuff. But checkinstall doesn't.

What debhelper is not doing :

Getting some binary (geckodriver) from internet source and placing it in /usr/bin
installing an homemade python module

Those actions are performed in my Makefile.am by overriding install-exec-local: (& respectively uninstall-local:) methods and executing some bash commands.

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So my question is : how could i keep best parts of those two packaging ways to made it "perfect" ?

This doesn’t answer your specific question, but I suggest you look at Vincent Bernat’s pragmatic Debian packaging guide; it might well be a better fit for you. — Stephen Kitt
– Stephen Kitt, Commented Mar 9, 2017 at 7:59

Wouter Verhelst · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-09 09:22:36Z

Downloading things from the internet is something a Debian package build is not supposed to be doing. If you use some 'build in clean chroot' helper, it may not even be able to do so. However, plain dpkg-buildpackage should be able to do so. If your autotools build system does the right thing, then nothing should be needed; otherwise, you'll need to add the necessary commands to an override_dh_foo command (see 'man dh' on that).

For Python modules, what you need to do is install the .py files from your build system, too, respecting $DESTDIR. If you do so, debhelper in dh mode should just DTRT.

If none of that worked, please produce a minimal version of your package that exhibits the problem; otherwise this is very much a crystal ball problem.

Neah-Ko · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-13 15:34:14Z

I rethinked my Makefile.am thanks to you. And eventually managed to get something.

Geting geckodriver

I am running the script to get it at ./configure step, and placing it as a file dependency in .deb package by assuming it's on the packing system like this :

bindeptsdir = \ $(prefix)/bin bindepts_DATA = \ /usr/local/bin/geckodriver

Installing python module

$(DESTDIR) was indeed the solution here, now my python module is installed like this :

$(PYTHON) setup.py install \ --root $(DESTDIR)

And it works fine appart from the fact that i must place this in my debian/rules : override_dh_usrlocal: else it's yelling at me because i'm installing files in /usr/local

I'd prefer not, but python is handling installation by itself, and i can't specify installation path. The other solution was to specify --prefix $(DESTDIR)$(prefix) instead of --root... but it's installing files in /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages which is not in pythonpath.

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Appart from python troubles final result works just fine with dpkg-buildpackage.

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