Debian packaging tools
Project description
The Python package deb-pkg-tools is a collection of functions to work with Debian packages and repositories. Some of those functions have a command line interface (see below) because they’re very convenient to use in shell scripts, while other functions are meant to be called directly from Python code. It’s currently tested on Python 2.6, 2.7 and 3.4.
Please note that deb-pkg-tools is quite opinionated about how Debian binary packages should be built and it enforces some of these opinions on its users. Most of this can be avoided with optional function arguments and/or environment variables. If you find something that doesn’t work to your liking and you can’t work around it, feel free to ask for an additional configuration option; I try to keep an open mind about the possible use cases of my projects.
Status
On the one hand the deb-pkg-tools package is based on my experiences with Debian packages and repositories over the past couple of years, on the other hand deb-pkg-tools itself is quite young. Then again most functionality is covered by automated tests; at the time of writing coverage is around 90% (some of the error handling is quite tricky to test if we also want to test the non-error case, which is of course the main focus :-)
Installation and usage
You can install the deb-pkg-tools package using the following command:
$ pip install deb-pkg-tools
After installation you’ll have the deb-pkg-tools program available:
$ deb-pkg-tools --help Usage: deb-pkg-tools [OPTIONS] Supported options: -i, --inspect=FILE inspect the metadata in a *.deb archive -b, --build=DIR build a Debian package with `dpkg-deb --build' -u, --update-repo=DIR create/update a trivial package repository -a, --activate-repo=DIR enable `apt-get' to install packages from a trivial repository (requires root/sudo privilege) -d, --deactivate-repo=DIR cleans up after --activate-repo (requires root/sudo privilege) -w, --with-repo=DIR CMD... create/update a trivial package repository, activate the repository, run the positional arguments as an external command (usually `apt-get install') and finally deactivate the repository -v, --verbose make more noise -h, --help show this message and exit
One thing to note is that the operation of deb-pkg-tools --update-repo can be influenced by a configuration file. For details about this, please refer to the documentation on deb_pkg_tools.repo.select_gpg_key().
If you’re interested in using deb-pkg-tools as a Python module, please refer to the function reference on Read the Docs.
Dependencies
The deb-pkg-tools package depends on the python-debian package for control file parsing (it will be automatically installed as a dependency). The following external programs are also required (depending on which functionality you need of course):
Program |
Package |
---|---|
apt-ftparchive |
apt-utils |
apt-get |
apt |
cp |
coreutils |
dpkg-deb |
dpkg |
dpkg-scanpackages |
dpkg-dev |
du |
coreutils |
fakeroot |
fakeroot |
gpg |
gnupg |
gzip |
gzip |
lintian |
lintian |
The majority of these programs/packages will already be installed on most Debian based systems so you should only need the following to get started:
$ sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev fakeroot lintian
Platform compatibility
Several things can be tweaked via environment variables if they don’t work for your system or platform. For example on Mac OS X the cp command doesn’t have an -l parameter and the root user and group may not exist, but despite these things it can still be useful to test package builds on Mac OS X. The following environment variables can be used to adjust such factors:
Variable |
Default |
Description |
---|---|---|
DPT_HARD_LINKS |
true |
Allow the usage of hard links to speed up file copies between directories on the same file system. |
DPT_ROOT_USER |
root |
During package builds the ownership of all directories and files is reset to this user. |
DPT_ROOT_GROUP |
root |
During package builds the ownership of all directories and files is reset to this group. |
DPT_SUDO |
true |
Enable the usage of sudo during operations that normally require elevated privileges. |
DPT_RESET_SETGID |
true |
Reset sticky bit on directories inside package templates before building. |
Environment variables for boolean options support the strings yes, true, 1, no, false and 0 (case is ignored).
Contact
The latest version of deb-pkg-tools is available on PyPI and GitHub. The documentation is hosted on Read the Docs. For bug reports please create an issue on GitHub. If you have questions, suggestions, etc. feel free to send me an e-mail at peter@peterodding.com.
License
This software is licensed under the MIT license.
© 2014 Peter Odding.
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