Debian Packaging Without Build Tool

I want to create a Debian package from a C program without the use of a build tool such as autotools or CMake. My debian/rules file:

#!/usr/bin/make -f

%:
    dh $@

override_dh_auto_clean:
    rm -f program

override_dh_auto_build:
    gcc program.c -o program

override_dh_auto_install:
    cp program /usr/local/bin

Upon running dpkg-buildpackage, I get: dh: error: Unknown sequence application (choose from: binary binary-arch binary-indep build build-arch build-indep clean install install-arch install-indep)

It seems the issue was related to the fact that I was creating the file in a shell script heredoc that was expanding the $@, e.g.

cat <<EOF > debian/rules.temp
#!/usr/bin/make -f

%:
    dh $@
EOF

Which should be:

all_symbol='$@'
cat <<EOF > debian/rules.temp
#!/usr/bin/make -f

%:
    dh $all_symbol
EOF

An unrelated issue is to the location of the override_dh_auto_install To manually create Debian file hierarchy it should be:

override_dh_auto_install:
    mkdir -p debian/PACKAGENAME/usr/bin 
    cp program debian/PACKAGENAME/usr/bin

Or, to have this done automatically:

cat <<EOF > debian/PACKAGENAME.install
program usr/bin
EOF