Introduction to packaging Go software for Debian
This is an introductory tutorial for making Debian packages specifically for software written in Go. If you need any help, feel free to ask on debian-go@lists.debian.org or #debian-golang.
Contents
Requirements
This tutorial assumes:
- basic understanding of general Debian packaging
gophian is installed
- an appropriate packaging environment is set up, including sbuild and DEBNAME/DEBEMAIL environment variables
gophian is experimental software! Please report any problems to: https://codeberg.org/Maytha8/gophian/issues
Step 0: Before starting
Check if already packaged
You'll want to check if the package is already in Debian, and you can use gophian to achieve this.
gophian search <IMPORTPATH>
Check for WNPP bugs
You also want to check for any existing WNPP bugs, to avoid duplicate effort and announce your Intent to Package. This can be done using wnpp-check (from the devscripts package, see man wnpp-check for more info). Please refer to section 5.1 of the Developers' Reference.
Estimate packaging effort
gophian can be used to estimate the amount of work needed to packaging a certain piece of software. i.e. gophian will roughly list any dependencies that also need to be packaged.
gophian estimate <IMPORTPATH>
Step 1: Generate initial packaging
Use gophian to create the initial packaging for your chosen piece of software.
gophian make <IMPORTPATH>
Pass --itp to generate an ITP bug template, which will be placed in itp.txt.
If the software you are packaging contains binaries (main packages), gophian will ask you what type of package you want to make. If you already know, you can pass the --type flag.
Step 2: Fill in the blanks
gophian will try to intelligently fill in as much information as possible, but there may be some holes. Use grep -r TODO debian/ to find such holes, and make sure to manually review all the generated files in the debian directory.
You need to:
- - manually add package descriptions to d/control. - check that d/changelog closes the ITP bug. - check that d/upstream/metadata contains the correct information. - check that any .install files are correct. - review d/copyright. - check if upstream includes any generated code (e.g. protobuf). If so, you will need to regenerate that code in d/rules.
Step 3: Build
Run sbuild!
Build failures are good! It means that the package is not yet complete, and you'll need to to diagnose and fix the problem.
Common problems include:
- Missing dependencies in d/control
- Dependencies that have not been packaged for Debian yet
Missing test data that needs to be explicitly included using DH_GOLANG_INSTALL_EXTRA in d/rules (see man Debian::Debhelper::Buildsystem::golang)
Step 4: Review and upload
For most people following this guide, this is the first time they are packaging a Golang package in Debian. Before moving further, it is a good idea to commit what you have to git, push to either your own repo or to a go-team repo, and seek feedback on either debian-go@lists.debian.org or #debian-golang on IRC.
If you are not a DD: seek a sponsor by sending a mail to debian-go@lists.debian.org. Creating a sponsorship-requests bug is unnecessary for packages within the Go team, and a list mail is often enough to get some attention.
If you are a DD: make sure a second pair of eyes has had a look at your work, then feel free to upload to NEW.