Using git tags for packaging

DISCLAIMER

Please, be advised that the supported and recommended way to package a Perl distribution under the Debian Perl team is documented in our Git guide.

DESCRIPTION

This document explains a way of packaging a Perl project from the upstream git tags instead of the CPAN tarballs. See libgit-annex-perl for an actual example.

STEPS

• Check out a new branch starting at upstream release tag.
• Make the package barebones inside a dzil build:

      dzil build
      cd Foo-Bar-*
      dh-make-perl --pkg-perl

• Move debian/ upwards to the actual repository:

      mv debian ..
      cd ..

  The rest of the output resulting from dh-make-perl is discarded, including the git repository created inside the dzil build.

• Replace debian/rules with:

      #!/usr/bin/make -f
  
      %:
          dh $@ --with dist-zilla

• Replace debian/watch with a non-CPAN version.

  For instance, if upstream is using cgit:

      version=4
      https://git.example.com/Foo-Bar \
          /snapshot/Foo-Bar-v?@ANY_VERSION@@ARCHIVE_EXT@

• Add dzil and dzil plugins to build-deps.

  For instance, debian/control may have the following contents depending on the plugins enabled in dzil dist.ini:

      Build-depends:
       debhelper-compat (= 12),
       dh-dist-zilla,
       libdist-zilla-plugin-git-perl,
       libdist-zilla-plugin-podweaver-perl,

• Enable autopkgtest in debian/control:

      Testsuite: autopkgtest-pkg-perl

• You may also want a debian/tests/pkg-perl/use-name like this:

      Foo::Bar

  Unless the main module name can be obtained from META.yml or META.json.

• Commit changes to debian/ and clean:

      git add debian
      git commit
      dzil clean

• Produce orig.tar using git-archive:

      git deborig

• Now you should be able to dpkg-buildpackage.

Authors

• Sean Whitton
• Alex Muntada

License

Copyright (c) 2020 by the individual authors and contributors noted above. All rights reserved. This document is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself

Perl is distributed under your choice of the GNU General Public License version 1 or later or the Artistic License. On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License version 1 can be found in `/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-1' and the Artistic License in `/usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic'.