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
debhelper 9.20120518 released with these changes
debhelper 9.20120513 released with these changes
- Improve -v logging. Closes: #672448
- dh_builddeb: Build udebs with xz compression, level 1, extreme strategy. This has been chosen to not need any more memory or cpu when uncompressing, while yeilding the best compressions for udebs. Thanks, Philipp Kern.
- Depend on a new enough dpkg for above features. Backporters will need to revert these changes.
debhelper 9.20120509 released with these changes
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