I've implemented last night's design, in debhelper 7.0.0.

Currently fully supported are packages that use the autotools, or perl's MakeMaker, or python setup.py, or a simple Makefile. The other classes of packages will be added as bugs are filed about them.

I've uploaded a few of my own packages converted to use debhelper 7 with minimised rules files, so there are a range of examples in incoming:

• mr uses a very simple makefile, and a 3 line debian/rules
• aalib uses automake and autoconf, and is a library package of average complexity. The rules file is minimised where possible using dh, but still does complex things in its build and install targets. It's also a good example of how to set up a -dbg package when using dh, and of how to set up /usr/share/doc symlinks between packages when using dh.
• libaudio-mpd-perl is an example of a perl module package using dh. It shows how to override dh default behavior in two ways: Skipping running dh_auto_test, and passing a changelog filename to dh_installchangelogs.

Early adopters, have at it!

discussion