joey/ code/ debhelper

debhelper is a collection of programs that can be used in a debian/rules file to automate common tasks related to building binary debian packages. Programs are included to install various files into your package, compress files, fix file permissions, integrate your package with the debian menu system, etc. This will be of use only to debian developers or others who wish to build debian packages.

Debhelper's git repository is now located at: git://git.debian.org/git/debhelper/debhelper.git

I posted a good overview of debhelper's history in my blog. Here is the thread that started it all.

Colin graphs debhelper statistics here.

News

RSS
version 9.20130605

debhelper 9.20130605 released with these changes

  • dh_installchangelogs: Fix bug preventing automatic installation of upstream changelog. Closes: #711131
Posted
version 9.20130604

debhelper 9.20130604 released with these changes

  • dh_installchangelogs: No longer automatically converts html changelogs. A plain text version can be provided as a second parameter, or it will generate a file with a pointer to the html changelog if not. html2text's reign of terror has ended. Closes: #562874
  • Allow building debhelper with USE_NLS=no to not require po4a to build. Closes: #709557
  • Correct broken patch for #706923. Closes: #707481
  • dh_installinit: Add appropriately versioned file-rc as an alternate when adding misc:Depends for an invoke-rc.d that supports upstart jobs. Closes: #709482
Posted
version 9.20130518

debhelper 9.20130518 released with these changes

  • dh_installchangelogs: Write the changelog entry used for a binNMU, as flagged by binary-only=yes to a separate file, in order to work around infelicities in dpkg's multiarch support. Closes: #708218 (Thanks, Ansgar Burchardt)
  • dh_installinit: Add versioned dependency on sysv-rc when shipping upstart jobs. Closes: #708720
Posted

Adding stuff

The tricky thing about maintaining debhelper is that everyone would like to see a program added to it to handle some special-purpose thing, and this is rarely a good idea, since it just serves to increase debhelper's command count, and thus its learning curve, while making me responsible for maintaining support for said obscure thing.

My first rule of thumb is that at least ten packages need to be obvious benefactors of a feature or command before it's added to debhelper. That's an easy bar; after that I have to do some thinking and made the hard call.

TODO: discuss wishlisted commands here