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It should be noted that none of this article applies to actual development that goes on in the Debian distribution from https://www.debian.org https://www.debia

It should be noted that none of this article applies to actual development that goes on in the Debian distribution from https://www.debian.org https://www.debian.org Official Debian development, being FOSS oriented, proceeds from Debian source packages instead, and one never creates a binary package from scratch as described in the article. Instead, we use `dpkg-buildpackage` and other similar tools. The creation of the source package is the hard part, having to follow all the aspects of Debian policy, including technical matters around quality.

deleted 6y ago
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secabeen 6y ago
Agreed. We use this technique to distribute commercial software to our workstations.
dijit 6y ago
Is there a guide on doing things that way? I've read some of the guides for making .deb packages (as I had to do so recently) and I have to be honest, what I encountered was "messy", articles and documentation that would work if followed but they didn't look even slightly similar. I'm too embarrassed to even link to the sources that I created.
- pabs3 6y ago
  The official entry point for getting packages into Debian is here: https://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers https://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers Debian packaging documentation is unfortunately a swamp, since people continue to write new guides instead of improving existing ones.
zwetan 6y ago
what if you need to distribute a .deb containing binaries that target other operating system ? example: I got a tool that allow from any Windows/macOS/Linux to package a runtime+script to any Windows/macOS/Linux the Windows .exe can not be compiled from sources under Linux, so this particular runtime can never be distributed on Debian official?
- pabs3 6y ago
  Debian contains cross-compilers for Windows (but not macOS yet), so you can compile a .exe and build that into a .deb easily. https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=mingw https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=mingw Probably the right thing for you to do is switch to WinGet on Windows and the Apple Store for macOS.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

secabeen 6y ago

Agreed. We use this technique to distribute commercial software to our workstations.

dijit 6y ago

Is there a guide on doing things that way? I've read some of the guides for making .deb packages (as I had to do so recently) and I have to be honest, what I encountered was "messy", articles and documentation that would work if followed but they didn't look even slightly similar. I'm too embarrassed to even link to the sources that I created.

pabs3 6y ago
The official entry point for getting packages into Debian is here: https://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers https://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers Debian packaging documentation is unfortunately a swamp, since people continue to write new guides instead of improving existing ones.

zwetan 6y ago

what if you need to distribute a .deb containing binaries that target other operating system ? example: I got a tool that allow from any Windows/macOS/Linux to package a runtime+script to any Windows/macOS/Linux the Windows .exe can not be compiled from sources under Linux, so this particular runtime can never be distributed on Debian official?

pabs3 6y ago
Debian contains cross-compilers for Windows (but not macOS yet), so you can compile a .exe and build that into a .deb easily. https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=mingw https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=mingw Probably the right thing for you to do is switch to WinGet on Windows and the Apple Store for macOS.