Search⌘ K
AI Features

Multipackage Builds

Understand how to build multiple binary packages from a single Debian source package by managing packaging control files and using tools like dh_movefiles and dh_install. Learn to organize files properly across packages and customize installation steps to separate different package components efficiently.

Sometimes, it makes sense to generate multiple binary packages from a single source package. Reasons for that include:

  • It makes documentation, headers, or debug symbols optional to install.

  • It separates out the library and the executable when other applications might depend on the library but not the executable (for example sqlite3 and libsqlite3-0).

  • It separates static data out into a separate package to avoid multiple large architecture-dependent packages.

Building packages from one source package

We can build multiple binary packages from one source package by adding several Package: <package-name> sections to our debian/control file.

In this case, dh_auto_build ...