Packing new CPAN modules and upgrading existing ones

[Damyan Ivanov]

-=| Keith Lawson, Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 09:42:43PM -0400 |=-
> Yup I'm new to packaging. Making a .deb package from CPAN source is
> easy enough with dh-make-perl so I'm just trying to understand the
> rest of the process now. What I'm struggling with is how the Perl
> group uses SVN. I've read the SVN guid and understand SVN basics but
> I'm still missing parts.
> 
> So to update a package from upstream one would:
> 
> - check out current source from SVN
> - uscan
> - svn-upgrade ../new_release.x.y.tar.gz
> 
> What's next?

Next, you build the package. Using a clean sid chroot is preferable as 
it helps catching missing build dependencies.

There are several tools that can help with this, the easiest (IMHO) of 
which is pbuilder. You need to create a tarball of the chroot:

    pbuilder --create --distribution sid

Then you build with

    pbuilder --debuild  # run from the source directory

The resulting package is in /var/cache/pbuilder/result. You may try 
installing it with dpkg and testing it.

Final uploading can be done only by people who have 'Devian 
Developer'[1] status. We use a handy system[2] for notifying such 
people, who regularly review and upload prepared packages.

    [1] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper
    [2] http://pkg-perl.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/pet.cgi

In order to make a package show in the 'Ready for upload' section, the 
changelog's stanza should contain 'unstable' instead of 'UNRELEASED' 
for distribution. The easiest way to do it is to call 'dch -r' and 
then commit the change.

There are many many more details about packaging, spread over several 
large documents. Perhaps the easiest to read of them all is the New 
Maintainer's Guide[3].

    [3] http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/

Welcome aboard!
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