


It's not actually a tar.gz or zip: the format is ar although that's not important.ĭebian packaging, in its simplest form, thus involves creating a. deb file - is sort of like a tar.gz or zip. The files are extracted into the filesystem root (/), so the file paths in a package are absolute paths. The metadata contains the package name, description, a list of dependencies, and more. Distributions, components and architecturesĪ Debian package contains metadata and files.The official package creation process (a.k.a.Inspecting a package with Midnight Commander.Two layers of package management tooling: dpkg and APT.Instead, I'll cover just enough of the basics to help you develop a mental model of what Debian packaging is about, and to be able to produce useful results.

This is not a full guide into all aspects of packaging. In this guide I'll provide a simple introduction into the Debian packaging process and its most important concepts. Debian packaging can be quite mysterious and hard to figure out.
