Building the Debian Perl package ================================ Patches Applied ---------------- A copy of all patches which have been applied to the source are in the debian/patches directory of the Debian source package. There are two classes of patches in the directory: debian/patches/fixes/* are generally applicable to any Perl installation (and usually back-ported from upstream, or posted to p5p when applied). Patches in debian/patches/debian implement changes which are specific to the Debian packaging, such as our @INC ordering or specific to policy such as not including standard directories in LD_RUN_PATH. Packaging Details ----------------- The Debian build process consists of the following components: debian/rules makefile which drives the build process as usual with Debian packages. This has been converted to use debhelper starting with version 5.30.0-2. debian/config.debian a helper script, invoked by debian/rules to run Configure with various options. debian/config.over used to fiddle some config.sh variables (copied to the source directory by the build process where it is picked up by Configure). debian/patches directory containg the patches applied (see above). These are maintained with git-debrebase, but if a standalone way to add a new patch is needed (for instance when NMUing), the recommended way is to use quilt(1). Using DEP-3 compatible headers for the patch will improve its description in `perl -V' output. See below for more information about using git-debrebase. quilt new debian/myfix quilt add [ hack ] echo 'patch description (Closes: #xxxxxx)' | quilt header -a # (or even better provide a full DEP-3 compatible header) quilt refresh debian/released-versions contains a list of released Debian versions, used by the debian/mkprovides script to generate a list of perlapi- provides for perl-base indicating the released versions the package is compatible with. debian/headers list of C headers to process with h2ph, which is run with "-a" to pick up any required includes--keep this base list as short as possible. Managing debian/patches with git-debrebase ------------------------------------------ This section is targeted at the Debian package maintainers, working with the Git repository pointed by the Vcs-Git field in debian/control. NMUers and the like can use the old way of standalone patch handling described above, or just hack the source and ignore debian/patches altogether. First, you need to be running buster or later, and have the 'git-debrebase' package installed. Then, follow the guide at dgit-maint-debrebase(7) ("EDITING THE DELTA QUEUE") tldr; git-debrebase -i to edit the patch queue In addition, ensure you add the necessary metadata in the commit message: Gbp-Pq: Topic {fixes,debian} Gbp-Pq: Name my_fix_name.diff IMPORTANT: any time you have been working with debrebase (for example to import a new upstream release, or edit any file outside debian/) ensure that you run the following commands before pushing: git debrebase conclude git-debrebase make-patches # or dgit build-source If you omit the former command, you will be unable to fast-forward-push. If you omit the latter, then the repository will not accurately represent the state of the package which will be a a problem for consistency and historical accuracy. Note that at the moment the perl maintainers are considering the use of dgit for building and uploading as optional (and yet to be documented). Continue to build and upload using your preferred methods in the meantime. Importing new upstream releases ------------------------------- Assuming you are importing a new major upstream release and have the files perl_5.31.0.orig.tar.xz and perl_5.31.0.orig-regen-configure.tar.gz in the parent directory (see below for information about the regen-configure component tarball). # necessary due to https://bugs.debian.org/898026 ln -s perl_5.31.0.orig-regen-configure.tar.gz perl_5.31.0.orig-regen-configure.tar.xz cd perl git branch upstream-debian-5.31 upstream-debian-5.30 git branch debian-5.31 debian-5.30 gbp import-orig --upstream-version 5.31.0 --upstream-branch upstream-debian-5.31 --debian-branch debian-5.31 --component regen-configure --no-merge ../perl_5.31.0.orig.tar.xz git debrebase new-upstream 5.31.0 # possibly resolve conflicts git diff debian/5.30.0-1..HEAD . ':!debian' # review changes # hack on code, add other patches, etc # before pushing git debrebase conclude git debrebase make-patches Package maintainer tests ------------------------ There are package maintainer tests in the debian/t/ directory that are supposed to pass at all times. It is recommended that you add a git pre-commit hook (.git/hooks/pre-commit) that runs the tests before releasing, for instance: #!/bin/sh if [ -e debian/changelog ] && \ git diff --cached debian/changelog | grep -q '^-.*UNRELEASED' && \ git diff --cached debian/changelog | grep -q '^\+.*unstable' then prove debian/t/*.t fi A special note on patching Configure ------------------------------------ The Configure and config_h.SH files are autogenerated upstream. The tooling is based on the 'dist' suite, which (among other things) contains a collection of probe units and a program called 'metaconfig' that makes the Configure script. Since 5.26.1-1, the perl source package contains a fork of these 'dist' probe units along with a set of specialised ones specific to the Perl Configure. These are in a separate original tarball component ('perl-regen-configure'). The recommended way to change Configure is to edit these units in regen-configure/U and run 'debian/rules update-configure' to regenerate Configure. (There is also some upstream machinery (mkgloss*, mksample) for automatically updating Porting/config.sh and Porting/Glossary that is not integrated to the Debian packaging. These only affect the source code documentation, not functionality.) Please see for a discussion about this issue. Regenerating the 'perl-regen-configure' original component tarball ------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a snapshot of the upstream git repository at , generated based on information in debian/watch and debian/copyright (Files-Excluded). It can be regenerated by running uscan(1), which uses mk-origtargz(1) behind the scenes. The initial packaging for 5.26.1 was based on upstream commit d99ddb45cefcc4ae5fde1787cfbe18e1073f9f54, tagged as debian/perl-5.26.1 in the above repository. Credits ------- Previous maintainers of Debian Perl packages: Ray Dassen , Carl Streeter , Robert Sanders and Darren Stalder . -- Brendan O'Dea Tue, 8 Mar 2005 19:30:38 +1100 -- Niko Tyni Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:47:51 +0200