Automated Debian package creation.

carefully captures the files created by a command like make install, and semi-automatically creates a Debian package to install the same files in a way that the package manager can keep track of. It's like checkinstall, except that it uses jan to capture filesystem changes, so it works even with statically-linked programs.

carefully depends on jan and dpkg, as well as standard Linux utilities.

Install from a Debian package, or run make install from a release tarball or development sources. carefully is self-hosting, so the carefully Debian package is itself generated with carefully.

$ carefully COMMAND...

where COMMAND is something like make install.

carefully will create a .carefully directory in the current directory where the results of running COMMAND will be stored, along with packaging metadata. Once COMMAND exits, carefully will open the Debian control file in your editor to allow you to configure the package name and dependencies, and will then generate a Debian package (.deb file) in the current directory. If you run carefully again, it will prompt before overwriting the existing files, but will always allow you to edit the control file and will always rebuild the Debian package.

In most cases you should not run carefully as root. It will elevate privileges using sudo when required (note that COMMAND will be run as root, so you should include a call to su if the installation needs to run as a non-root user).

Contributions are welcome!

Everyone interacting with this project is expected to abide by the terms of the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct. Violations should be reported to [email protected].

Copyright © 2020 Ash Holland. Licensed under the EUPL (1.2 or later).