Chapter 13. Tool usages

You can compare file contents in two source Debian packages with the debdiff command.

$ debdiff old-package.dsc new-package.dsc

You can also compare file lists in two sets of binary Debian packages with the debdiff command.

$ debdiff old-package.changes new-package.changes

These are useful to identify what has been changed in the source packages and to check for inadvertent changes made when updating binary packages, such as unintentionally misplacing or removing files.

Debian now enforces the source-only upload when developing packages. So there may be 2 different *.changes files:

You can download the set of files for the Debian source package with the dget command.

$ dget https://www.example.org/path/to/package_version-rev.dsc

You can make the upstream tarball ../foo-newversion.tar.[xg]z accessible from the Debian source tree as ../foo_newversion.orig.tar.[xg]z. This command is useful for renaming and symlinking the upstream tarball to the expected Debian naming convention.

You can fetch the pre-existing orig tarball of a Debian package from various sources, and unpack it with origtargz command.

This is basically for -2, -3, …​ revisions.

If the upstream project is hosted in a Git repository without an official tarball release, you can generate its orig tarball from the git repository for use by the Debian source package. Execute “git deborig” from the root of the checked-out source tree.

This is basically for -1 revisions.

The “dpkg-source -b” command packs the upstream source tree into the Debian source package.

It expects a series of patches in the debian/patches/ directory and their application sequence in debian/patches/series.

You should install generated packages with the debc command to test it locally.

$ debc package_version-rev_arch.changes

You should install generated packages with the piuparts command to test it automatically.

$ sudo piuparts package_version-rev_arch.changes

	Note
	This is a very slow process with remote APT package repository access.