1 .TH DEBHELPER 1 "" "Debhelper Commands" "Debhelper Commands"
3 debhelper \- overview of the debhelper commands
6 .I "[-v] [-a] [-i] [-s] [--no-act] [-ppackage] [-Npackage] [-Ptmpdir]"
8 Debhelper is a collection of programs that can be used in debian/rules files
9 to automate common tasks related to building debian binary packages. All the
10 debhelper commands accept a set of options, and this man page is here to
11 document those options and to document debhelper as a whole. For additional
12 options, and documentation for each individual command, see the commands' own
14 .SH "SHARED DEBHLPER OPTIONS"
17 Verbose mode: show all commands that modify the package build directory.
20 Do not really do anything. If used with -v, the result is that the command
21 will output a list of what it would have done.
24 Act on all architecture dependent packages.
27 Act on all architecture independent packages.
29 .B \-ppackage, \--package=package
30 Act on the package named "package".
33 This is a smarter version of the -a flag, that is used in some rare
34 circumstances. It understands that if the control file lists "Architecture: i386"
35 for the package, the package should not be acted on on other architectures. So
36 this flag makes the command act on all "Architecture: any" packages, as well
37 as on any packages that have the current architecture explicitly specified.
38 Constrast to the -a flag, which makes the command work on all packages that
39 are not architecture independant.
41 .B \-Npackage, \--no-package=package
42 Do not act on the specified package even if an -a, -i, or -p option lists
43 the package as one that should be acted on.
45 .B \-Ptmpdir, \--tmpdir=tmpdir
46 Use "tmpdir" for package build directory.
49 .B Multiple binary package support
51 If your source package generates more than one binary package, debhelper
52 programs will default to acting on all binary packages when run. If your
53 source package happens to generate one architecture dependent package, and
54 another architecture independent package, this is not the correct behavior,
55 because you need to generate the architecture dependent packages in the
56 binary-arch debian/rules target, and the architecture independent packages
57 in the binary-indep debian/rules target.
59 To facilitate this, as well as give you more control over which packages
60 are acted on by debhelper programs, all debhelper programs accept the
68 parameters. These parameters are cumulative. If none are given,
69 debhelper programs default to acting on all packages listed in the control
73 .BR /usr/doc/debhelper/examples/rules.multi
74 for an example of how to use this.
77 .B Package build directories
79 By default, all debhelper programs assume that the temporary directory used
80 for assembling the tree of files in a package is debian/tmp for the first
81 package listed in debian/control, and debian/<packagename> for each
84 Sometimes, you might want to use some other temporary directory. This is
87 flag. For example, "dh_installdocs -Pdebian/tmp", will use debian/tmp as the
88 temporary directory. Note that if you use -P, the debhelper programs can only
89 be acting on a single package at a time. So if you have a package that builds
90 many binary packages, you will need to use the -p flag to specify which
91 binary package the debhelper program will act on.
95 In general, if any debhelper program needs a directory to exist under
96 debian/, it will create it. I haven't bothered to document this in all the
97 man pages, but for example, dh_installdeb knows to make debian/tmp/DEBIAN/
98 before trying to put files there, dh_installmenu knows you need a
99 debian/tmp/usr/lib/menu/ before installing the menu files, etc.
100 .SH "DEBHELPER COMMANDS"
101 Here is the complete list of available debhelper commands.
106 Enables verbose mode.
112 Anything in this variable will be prepended to the command line
113 arguments of all debhelper commands. This in useful in some situations,
114 for example, if you need to pass -p to all debhelper commands that will be
115 run. If you use DH_OPTIONS, be sure to use "dh_testversion 1.1.17" - older
116 debhelpers will ignore it and do things you don't want them to.
119 .BR /usr/doc/debhelper/README
120 An introduction to debhelper.
122 .BR /usr/doc/debhelper/examples/
123 A set of example debian/rules files that use debhelper.
125 .BR http://kitenet.net/programs/debhelper/
128 Joey Hess <joeyh@master.debian.org>