elbe-debianize

NAME

elbe-debianize - How to debianize software

DESCRIPTION

elbe debianize used to be a command that generated a debian directory inside a source tree of the Linux kernel, U-Boot, or Barebox. The templates that the command used for that directory do not follow Debian’s best practices and broke for Linux >= 5.16. Therefore, elbe debianize was removed and is no longer supported.

In order to package U-Boot, please use the u-boot source package from the Debian archive. Modifying it for your target architecture or a vendor source tree should be straight-forward.

For Barebox, there is no alternative currently. However, Debian bug #900958 asks for a barebox package. When that is resolved, please refer to that package.

Linux has a built-in deb-pkg make target for a long time. The problem with using it as elbe debianize alternative is that it builds the source and binary packages directly after inserting the debian directory into the source. To build only the source package, one must set the make variable DPKG_FLAGS=-S on the deb-pkg call. Just be sure to configure the kernel so that a .config file is available, and to set the variables that are evaluated by the script. See this man page’s EXAMPLES section. After the source package is built, there is one generated file that does not belong to an unbuilt debian directory: debian/files.

Instead of specifying a specific defconfig the .config will end up being used. There is no compiler prefix embedded in debian/rules for cross compilation, so you need to specify it while building the package.

This will only generate the source package format that is specified in the Linux tree, which is 1.0 for versions < 6.3. The resulting kernel image format will be the default for the build architecture and the uImage load address is not included in the debian directory but it should be derived from some defconfig value if needed.

Several Linux versions will not generate all the Build-Depends that are needed to build in a clean environment and you will probably need to fix them manually.

EXAMPLES

In order to debianize and build a stable kernel for an arm64 system use the following commands. Most of the environment and make variables are optional but demonstrate the replacements for the elbe debianize fields.

$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git
$ cd linux-stable
$ export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu-
$ export DEBEMAIL="`git config user.name` <`git config user.email`>"
$ export KDEB_CHANGELOG_DIST=unstable
$ make ARCH=arm64 defconfig
$ make ARCH=arm64 DPKG_FLAGS=-S KERNELRELEASE=6.2-elbe deb-pkg
$ rm debian/files
$ git add -f debian
$ git commit -sm 'add the deb-pkg generated debianization'
$ CC=aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc dpkg-buildpackage -b -aarm64