Every now and then one would like to have a Debian package made of her very own software.

This is where the Magic Makefile comes into play.

Get it from http://repo.fischglas.de or http://www.fischglas.de/software/magicmakefile.

create a project directory and populate it:

mkdir myproject
cd myproject
cp /usr/share/magicmakefile/Makefile .

Inside Makefile, change:

APPNAME=some-app
VERSION=0.0

Create magic-makefile.inc:

UPLOADURL=http://example.com/cgi/repo-insert
DEBIAN_FULL_NAME=John Doe
DEBIAN_EMAIL=John.Doe@example.com
DEBIAN_HOMEPAGE=http://example.com/debian-local/
VERSION_CONTROL_SYSTEM=git

Hint: as of 0.99.7 you may choose between git and svn.

Caveat: Do not use quotes inside magic-makefile.inc.

If you're planning to use Magic Makefile for several projects or site wide you may have a ~/.magic-makefile.inc and even a /etc/magic-makefile/magic-makefile.inc.

Create Debian special foo i.e. the debian/ subdirectory.

make debian-prepkg

Add a description to debian/control. See http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/dreq.en.html for details.

see below

create a project directory and populate it:

mkdir myproject
cd myproject
cp /usr/share/magicmakefile/Makefile .

Inside Makefile, change:

APPNAME=some-app
VERSION=0.0

UPLOADURL=http://example.com/cgi/repo-insert
DEBIAN_FULL_NAME=John Doe
DEBIAN_EMAIL=John.Doe@example.com
DEBIAN_HOMEPAGE=http://example.com/debian-local/

Hint: as of 0.99.5.1 no quotation is needed here.

Create Debian special foo i.e. the debian/ subdirectory.

make debian-prepkg

Add a description to debian/control. See http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/dreq.en.html for details.

The basic idea behind Magic Makefile is to provide a fixed set of (mostly) flat subdirectories whose contents are to go to corresponding system directories.

E.g. the contents of ubin will go to /usr/bin.

The list of subdirectories:

The contents of docs/ are directed to several documentation subdirectories:

It is encouraged that documentation is provided as DocBook/SGML because all other document formats (like HTML, TXT and man) might be derived from SGML by Magic Makefile automatically.

You might want to copy this sample (manual-sgml-sample) to docs/$(APPNAME).sgml .

After you've changed things and want to release the new version of your software, follow these steps:

• update the VERSION inside Makefile
• update debian/changelog (see below)
• run make debian-dpkg
• if you have a Subversion repository - run make commit
• if you have an APT repository set up the way I have - run make debian-upload

The format of debian/changelog looks like this (without leading line numbers):

     1	magicmakefile (0.99.5) unstable; urgency=low
     2	
     3	  * added recommends dh-make, curl
     4	
     5	 -- chris <magicmakefile@citecs.de>  Tue, 18 Dec 2012 08:53:14 +0100
     6	
     7	magicmakefile (0.99.4) unstable; urgency=low
     8	
     9	  * generic support f. manpages
    10	
    11	 -- chris <magicmakefile@citecs.de>  Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:11:15 +0100

• 1 : package-name (version) (stable|unstable|testing); urgency=(low|high)
• 2 : empty line
• 3 : two spaces, '*', space, text
• 4 : empty line
• 5 : space, two '-', space, your name, space, '<', your email address, '>', TWO spaces, $( date -R )
• 6 : empty line

There may be multiple subsequent lines like line 3.