debbie

.DEB Built In Erlang.

Overview

debbie is an Erlang module that creates DEBIAN binary or sources packages from an usual DEBIAN package directory structure on disk. debbie use edgar for Gnu AR format, and swab for fakeroot or Uid/Gid setting. debbie is FULL Erlang, and no external command is done, allowing to create DEBIAN packages on any platform where Erlang can run. An Erlang equivalent to dpkg-deb -Zgzip --build dir/

No need of a DEBIAN machine or VM, but obviously, only cross-compiled or multi-platform applications must be used if your local platform is incompatible with your target platform... debbie is not magic !

No need to have root privilege, neither fakeroot command, UID/GID are modified in embedded TAR files. Specific global non-root UID/GID and user/group names can also be set to data packed in data.tar.gz, otherwise default is set to 0/root.

TIP : For easier integration in scripts, please see also debut , which will also rename the package to valid DEBIAN package name for you ...

Example

Considere this below trivial DEBIAN binary package structure for 'myapp' application :

tree /path/to/my/debian/structure/
├── DEBIAN
│   └── control
├── etc
│   └── myapp.conf
└── usr
    └── bin
        └── myapp

(note : a valid DEBIAN package should have more files, like copyright, Man pages, etc... See Debian policy).

Creating a .deb package, in a erl shell, is simple as :

debbie:fy([{root_path, "/path/to/my/debian/structure/"}]).

The file debian.deb is created in /path/to/my/debian/structure/ directory.

Demo

A Debian structure is ready in priv/ directory, with a simple helloworld application. Simply run in your Erlang Shell :

debbie:fy([{root_path, "priv/"}]).

Then, under root, you can test the debian package by installing it :

#> dpkg -i priv/debian.deb
#> helloworld
Hello world !

Then, removing this dummy package :

dpkg -r helloworld

Limitation

Only few controls are done : presence of control file and something to pack, i.e. at least another directory than DEBIAN/debian under root path. No attempt is done to check if control files are valid. It's up to you, or another module/application, to create a valid DEBIAN package structure.

Documentation

A complete documentation is available.

Simply run make docs and open doc/index.html in your favorite browser, this will insure you having the documentation related to your version.

Quick Start

git clone git://github.com/crownedgrouse/debbie.git
cd debbie
make
erl -pa `pwd`/ebin -pa `pwd`/deps/edgar/ebin -pa `pwd`/deps/swab/ebin

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please use pull-requests.