debmake-unofficial

⚠️ Unofficial PyPI distribution of debmake. See details below.

This repository provides an unofficial PyPI package for debmake, a Debian packaging tool.

This is not the official upstream distribution.

• Upstream project: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debmake
• Maintained by Debian developers
• This repo exists only to provide easy installation of the latest upstream debmake releases via python package managers
• this repo and the PyPI package are not endorsed by Debian or upstream maintainers

Installation

# with pip
pip install debmake-unofficial

# with uv
uv tool install debmake-unofficial@latest  # Install debmake globally.

# with pipx
pipx install debmake-unofficial

Original README

This is the new debmake program written in Python. This provides convenient command to make a Debian package from the upstream VCS/tarball/source-tree.

This is available as the "debmake" package on Debian.

• Homepage: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debmake
• Default branch: main
• Major refactor happened 5.0.0-5.1.0 (No mote -a -t -T -l -c ....)
• Now optional positional argument can specify:
  • tarball URL
  • git repository URL
  • PATH to source tree
  • PATH to tarball

See the HTML files in the "debmake-doc" package for the introductory guide.

General source structure

The src/debmake/__main__.py is provides the entry point and backbone of the debmake command. Its code flows as follows:

• debmake.para.para -- this is the command line parser
• debmake.debs.debs -- parse -b spec and return para["debs"]
• debmake.analyze.analyze -- analyze source tree to identify its build system
• debmake.control.control -- write out debian/control configuration file
• debmake.debian.debian -- write out other debian/* configuration files

License for the entire source

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

FILES outside of src/debmake/data/

• Copyright © 2013-2026 Osamu Aoki osamu@debian.org

FILES inside of src/debmake/data/

• Copyright © Jim Van Zandt jrv@debian.org
• Copyright © Santiago Vila sanvila@ctv.es
• Copyright © Dirk Eddelbuettel edd@debian.org
• Copyright © Nils Naumann naumann@unileoben.ac.at
• Copyright © Jim Van Zandt jrv@debian.org
• Copyright © 2013-2026 Osamu Aoki osamu@debian.org

Some of these are originally generated by the output of the dh_make command. The output has been edited by Osamu Aoki to fit into this package. The dh-make package came with the GPL license with the following permissive exception:

As a special exception, when the template files are copied by dh-make into dh-make output files, you may use those output files without restriction. This special exception was added by Craig Small in version 0.37 of dh-make.

Since this exception is permissive, I am releasing the entire source package under permissive MIT license as above.

History

The author thanks previous efforts on this topic (GPL):

• debmake: command: deb-make, version up to 3.8 (shell script)
  • 1996-1997 Christoph Lameter clameter@debian.org
  • 1997-2006 Santiago Vila sanvila@debian.org
• dh-make: command: dh_make (perl script)
  • 1998-2012 Craig Small csmall@debian.org (This is active project in 2021. Around 2016, dh-make was ported to python code base with major updates.)
• Since version 5.0.0 in 2026 of debmake, license check functionality is delegated to licensecheck

How to install

Debian/Ubuntu package to a system:

$ sudo apt-get install debmake

For other POSIX system, you can create a wheel package and install it with pip in the virtual environment. For example.

 $ mkdir -p path/to/venv
 $ python3 -m venv path/to/venv
 $ source path/to/venv/bin/activate
(venv) $ cd path/to/debmake
(venv) $ python3 -m build
(venv) $ pip install dist/debmake*.whl

How to modify as contributor

1. Check-out default branch "main": $ git clone https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debmake.git
2. Make modification to "main" branch (or your private topic branch and send us your pull request or patch).

How to update as upstream before release

1. Update src/debmake/__init__.py with new upstream version 5.1.3
2. Add a new entry to the debian/changelog with the new upstream version ("dch -i" creates entry such as 5.1.2 --> change to 5.1.3)
3. When debmake command line interface changes:
   • Check the latest CLI using "debmake -h"
   • update asciidoc/manpage.txt in debmake-doc package
   • generate a new debmake.1 file in its source wuth "make debmake.1"
   • copy generated debmake.1 file into manpages/debmake.1
4. Tag it with upstream version upstream/5.1.3 and build with

        $ git tag -s 5.1.3
        $ git deborig
	$ sbuild

5. Clean source tree with

        $ git clean -d -f -x

6. Make source only upload.

        $ dgit push-source

(Initial dgit transition needs more work with --deliberately-not-fast-forward or --overwrite. See dgit-maint-merge(7))

Please follow PEP-8 as much as possible.

• format source with "black" and "isort"
• check source with "pyright" if possible
• indent 4 spaces
• 80 char/line

Debug the source code without installing it as deb package

The source code can be tested by installing its wheel package to your user's venv environment.

 $ mkdir -p path/to/venv
 $ python3 -m venv path/to/venv
 $ source path/to/venv/bin/activate
(venv) $ pip install dist/debmake*.whl

Here, I install debmake module into a python virtual environment.

Now debmake script providing debmake equivalent command can be executed from the command line for debugging.

$ debmake [-h] [-n] [URL]

There are other ways to test code in place without installing them. One way is to set up the module loading path $PYTHONPATH to src/; and the command search path $PATH to be extended to include src/debmake/ respectively from where setup.py is found by sourcing as:

 $ source setenv

Script ./__main__.py providing /usr/bin/debmake equivalent available under this shell environment.

Since setting proper environment variables $PATH and $PYTHONPATH or executing a command from a particular path are confusing, I don't recommend testing code in place.

Hints for reading the source

How copyright files are scanned by debmake in normal usage?

    normal execution     --> debmake/debian.py    debian()
                         +-> calling licensecheck to make debian/copyright
                         +-> other debian/* files made from template files

(PATH are relative to src/)