Maintaining Debian Packages of Your Own Dist::Zilla based Perl Modules

Typical VCS-Workflow for Building .deb Packages from Your Own Perl Module

  1. Build CPAN tar-ball from master branch with dzil build
  2. Switch to the upstream branch
  3. Import the contents of the tar-ball destined for CPAN into VCS
  4. Merge the upstream branch into the debian branch
  5. Update packaging (debian/changelog, etc.)
  6. Build .deb package

What we want

  • Building the .deb directly from a VCS checkout
  • Skip manual tar-ball generation and reimport
  • Don’t commit generated files to VCS

dh-dist-zilla

Obstacles

  • dh-make-perl (for bootstrapping the Debian packaging) needs CPAN meta data.
    • Solution: Run dh-make-perl once manually inside the dzil-generated build directory, copy debian/ subdirectory back into the project root directory.
  • debhelper (dh) only knows about Build.PL and Makefile.PL, not about dist.ini

Debhelper Sequence Modification

  • Generate build directory before debhelper looks for the existing of Build.PL or Makefile.PL.
    • Call dzil build before dh_auto_configure
    • Ignore generated tar ball
  • Build package inside the generated build directory
    • Pass build directory option -D to dh_auto_configure, dh_auto_build, dh_auto_test and dh_auto_install.
  • Easy cleanup: Just delete the build directory.
    • Call dzil clean before dh_auto_clean.

How do I use dh-dist-zilla in my Debian package?

It’s as simple as this debian/rules file:

#!/usr/bin/make -f
%:
      dh $@ --with dist-zilla

Additionally, a build-dependency on dh-dist-zilla is needed.

Untypical Workflow

Expected / Traditional:

  • VCS → dzil build → CPAN tar-ball ∈ Debian Source Package → Debian Binary Package

dh-dist-zilla:

  • VCS → dzil build → CPAN tar-ball
  • VCS = Debian Source Package → Debian Binary Package

Links

Slides

Tools

Examples