How do I make a deb package of a ruby script?

[ceeg]

I finished a ruby program recently, and I'd like to make a package out of it so a friend of mine can simply apt-get install myprogram from my repository.

Anyone know how I can do this?

[WW]

Here is one way to create a .deb file, using the program epm. First, install epm with the command

$ sudo apt-get install epm

As an example, I will create a package for a very simple python program called helloworld.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python

#
# helloworld.py
#

print 'Hello, World!'

In the directory that contains helloworld.py, create a file called helloworld.list that looks like this:

%product Hello World
%copyright 2007 by Yours Truly
%vendor Yours Truly
%description This program prints "Hello, World!"
%version 0.1
%readme README
%license LICENSE
%requires python

f 755 root sys /usr/bin/helloworld.py helloworld.py

Then, in the same directory, create the files README and LICENSE. At a minimum, do this:

$ touch README
$ touch LICENSE

(Of course, you should really put useful information in those files.)

Finally, we use epm to create the package:

$ epm -f deb helloworld

You might see this warning:

epm: Warning - file permissions and ownership may not be correct
     in Debian packages unless you run EPM as root!

but the package will work fine (well, it has for me so far).

The package will be created in a subdirectoy; the name of the subdirectory and the package depend on the architecture of your computer. On an Intel computer (running the 2.6 kernel), the directory is linux-2.6-intel, and the package is helloworld-0.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb.

If you don't want to include "linux-2.6-intel" in the filename of the package, you can use the -n option:

epm -n -f deb helloworld

This will create a package called helloworld-0.1.deb. (It will still be in the directory linux-2.6-intel.)

You can find out more about epm here: http://www.easysw.com/epm/

I don't know anything about setting up a repository, so I can't help you with that.

[ceeg]

Well that's certainly a lot easier than the way I ended figuring it out
Thanks a bunch.

[scicode]

hi, thanks for the tutoria WW

after watching this wonderful tutorial on how to make deb packages for ubuntu I decided to try epm first.

[scicode]

ok i was very sucessfull in making a nice .deb package of my program ... however epm is missing sections for ubuntu (science, games ...) which is not that bad, but I also discovered on more thing:

if I install python files and execute them .pyc files will be created, these are not removed when I remove the package with synaptic (a warning is issued while removing that some files are left behing). My solution for now is to also include the .pyc files in the installation. Is that correct? I also wonder what happens when I install my main program files into /usr/bin and they do not have an .py extension, will the pyc files still be created and how do I treat these files?

[Frak]

Thanks for the tutorial WW.

[charlie763]

I don't know anything about setting up a repository, so I can't help you with that.

Here is an article about a service on Launchpad. From the article:

Developers upload packages to a PPA and have it built for multiple architectures against the current version of Ubuntu. Each user gets up to 1GB of Personal Package Archive space, which works as a standard Ubuntu software package repository. Free PPAs are available only for free ("libre") software packages.

So you don't need to set up your own repository, Launchpad will take care of that for you. This feature is currently available.

[charlie763]

ok i was very sucessfull in making a nice .deb package of my program ... however epm is missing sections for ubuntu (science, games ...) which is not that bad, but I also discovered on more thing:

if I install python files and execute them .pyc files will be created, these are not removed when I remove the package with synaptic (a warning is issued while removing that some files are left behing). My solution for now is to also include the .pyc files in the installation. Is that correct? I also wonder what happens when I install my main program files into /usr/bin and they do not have an .py extension, will the pyc files still be created and how do I treat these files?

I have the same problem with the pyc files. Anyone have a more elegant solution?

[code-breaker]

Maybe you can use a prerm shell script to remove the pyc files:

http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-pkg...s-maintscripts

[charlie763]

I think that's exactly what I'll do when I finally get around to making a nice source package that adheres to .deb standards. For now I have it set up such that the .py files are compiled into .pyc files. The .pyc files are installed instead of the .py files. This solves the derelict-file problem and has the added benefit of being a bit faster the first time it's run. The only problem is that it needs to be compiled for each architecture. Here is my Makefile.

gladex : package

package : gladex-0.3.4.deb

gladex-0.3.4.deb : gladex.list # And a bunch of other stuff.
	python -mcompileall .
	sudo epm -n -f deb gladex

install :
	sudo dpkg --install linux-2.6-*/gladex-0.3.4.deb

clean :
	rm -rfv linux-2.6-* *~ *.pyc \#*\#