The following document gives a brief out-line on how to create a Debian package, this is by no means complete and the Debian New Maintainer's Guide
as well as the Debian Developer's Reference
should be consulted.
To start with I will give a an example base on the steps required to rebuild the mozilla-browser package after Linxus specific changes have been made.
apt-get source mozilla-browser
tar -xjf mozilla-source-2.0.0.tar.bz2
tar -cf mozilla-source-2.0.0.tar mozilla-source-2.0.0
In the first step we download the source using apt-get, then we change to the directory where the source is stored. We then unpack the tarball and make any changes needed. Finally, we recreate the tarball, increment the version number and comment the changelog. The final step is to build the package with the dpkg-buildpackage command. This is a very basic example but it should allow you to get the basic idea of how to modify and rebuild a pre-exisisting package.
- 14 Dec 2004