Compiling Debian or Ubuntu Source Packages

Posted on 2009-4-27 (月) at 6:26 am by Rafael Kitover [SIGNED]

Often times it's convenient to modify a debian package slightly, or to backport a newer package to an older dist.

This is much easier than it sounds.

As an example, I'll show you how to build a copy of rxvt-unicode with the 256 color patch (which makes vim much prettier!).

First get some packaging utils and scripts:

sudo aptitude install build-essential dpkg-dev fakeroot debhelper devscripts

Add a deb-src line to your /etc/apt/sources.list :

deb-src http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

It looks just like a deb line.

Now build the package:

mkdir build; cd build
sudo aptitude update
sudo apt-get build-dep rxvt-unicode-ml
apt-get source rxvt-unicode-ml
cd rxvt-unicode-*
patch -p1 < doc/urxvt-8.2-256color.patch
dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc -rfakeroot

Now get some coffee and smoke a few cigarettes.

...

And the packages are built!

cd ..
ls *.deb
# rxvt-unicode_9.06-1_i386.deb  rxvt-unicode-lite_9.06-1_i386.deb  rxvt-unicode-ml_9.06-1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i rxvt-unicode-ml*.deb

Last thing you want to do is put the package you just built and installed on hold, so that aptitude/apt-get doesn't upgrade it to the default version.

sudo aptitude hold rxvt-unicode-ml

The procedure is pretty much the same for backporting packages, you just use a newer dist for your deb-src line.

If you want to modify not just the source, but things like ./configure options or other things in the build process, edit the debian/rules file in the source directory before building.

UPDATE: I'm told that the new way to do this is to use pbuilder.


Last modified: 2009-5-4 (月) at 2:57 am