I have a C/C++ am autoconf source package for Linux that consist of several binaries, logical in development as many of them share the same source. Some binaries run in a graphical environment, some are server components, some drivers for the server, libs and others are shell commands. I would like to make a proper debian package for this system (I already have a working checkinstall based install).
If I follow the Debian tutorials I can make a package for for all binaries in one. But how do I do if I want to make a package that just install one binary component? In my case installing graphical stuff separate from non-graphical stuff.
As it looks from the tutorials I need to make a separate source package for each package I want to maintain but that sounds stupid and I must have missed something.
Any help or pointers are welcome.
A single source package can be build into multiple binary packages (aka .deb-files, which you can install). This is indeed a very common pattern when creating Debian packages.
To create multiple binary packages, you need to add a section for each of them to your debian/control file. Something like:
Source: foobar
Section: utils
Priority: optional
Maintainer: me@example.com
Build-Depends:
debhelper (>= 10~),
Standards-Version: 4.1.1
Homepage: https://github.com/foobar/foobar
Package: foobar
Section: utils
Architecture: any
Multi-Arch: same
Depends:
foobar-common (= ${source:Version}),
${misc:Depends},
Description: foo bar baz
bla bla bla
Package: foobar-data
Architecture: all
Depends:
${misc:Depends},
Description: foo bar baz (architecture independent files)
furbel wurbel wiznagod blumpl.
bla bla bla.
.
this package contains the binary independent parts
In the simplest case you then need to specify which files go into which package:
$ cat debian/foobar.install
foobar usr/bin/
foobar.1 usr/share/man/man1/
$ cat debian/foobar-data.install
data/* usr/share/foobar/
$
Of course there is plenty of documentation available about this.