checkinstall creates useless deb?

Question

I have a trivially simple command-line program that literally consists of a python script and some helper shell scripts. I'd like to learn about packaging this program, though it is trivial.

From what I gathered, I went the configure/make/install route. Since I didn't have anything to configure, or anything to make, I simple created a Makefile with nothing but an install section:

install:
        cp ./myProgram /usr/bin/my-program
        chown root:root /usr/bin/my-program
        chmod 777 /usr/bin/my-program
        cp -r ./ProgramResources /usr/lib/my-program
        chown -hR root:root /usr/lib/my-program
        chmod -R 777 /usr/lib/my-program

At this point, my program installs and runs fine with sudo make install.

Then, I attempt to make a deb file using checkinstall as follows:

sudo checkinstall sudo make install

It appears to get past the install part, as it reports it successful, but then fails:

======================== Installation successful ==========================
cp: cannot stat `//var/tmp/tmp.jKCmESc0v7/newfiles.tmp': No such file or directory

Copying files to the temporary directory...OK

Stripping ELF binaries and libraries...OK

Compressing man pages...OK

Building file list... FAILED!

Building Debian package...OK

Installing Debian package...OK

Erasing temporary files...OK

Deleting temp dir...OK


**********************************************************************

 Done. The new package has been installed and saved to

 ...

The program is installed, but as far as I can tell, this newly made .deb file does nothing. dpkg -L my-program yields only

/.

and manually removing it and installing from the deb file doesn't appear to do anything - it doesn't actually put any files anywhere.

So, (1) Is there anything wrong with my approach? and (2) How can I fix the checkinstall problem?

Thank you very much for answers, even though I'm good with code, I've never known anything about packaging/distribution.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this exactly answers the question, but here's what I got so far (on ubuntu lucid, checkinstall 1.6.1):

I tried to build an open-source project, which built just fine. Then I tried packaging it for debian:

checkinstall -D --install=no --pkgname=$PKGNAME --pkgversion=0.0.1 --pkgrelease="svn-001" [email protected] --strip=no --stripso=no --addso=yes

This basically failed at the same Building file list... FAILED!; and a similar grep: /var/tmp/tmp.NaoiwTHT6F/newfile: No such file or directory was reported.

I also tried with adding make at end of checkinstall command above - that didn't do much either.

Finally, I tried this:

make clean
checkinstall -D --install=no --pkgname=$PKGNAME --pkgversion=0.0.1 --pkgrelease="svn-001" [email protected] --strip=no --stripso=no --addso=yes -d2 make

The switch -d2 is to enable debug; and ... make will rerun make one more time.

The -d2 will print out the temporary directory:

debug: The temporary directory is: [ /var/tmp/tmp.NaoiwTHT6F ]

, so it can be checked by listing... And indeed, I can confirm that a newfile is not generated there in my case (however, there is newfiles, newfiles.installwatch, newfiles-tar, and newfiles.tmp). In fact, turns out checkinstall is a bash script, and so one can confirm that newfile only appears once in it:

$ grep 'newfile ' `which checkinstall`
    grep '^/home' ${TMP_DIR}/newfile > /${TMP_DIR}/unwanted

Also, the debug will point out these files/directories:

debug: INSTW_EXCLUDE=/dev,/path/to/myproject-build,/proc,/tmp,/var/tmp,
debug: INSTW_ROOTPATH=/var/tmp/tmp.NaoiwTHT6F
debug: INSTW_LOGFILE=/var/tmp/tmp.NaoiwTHT6F/newfiles.tmp
debug: INSTW_DBGFILE=/var/tmp/tmp.NaoiwTHT6F/dbgfile

Note that by default, the path to my build folder, /path/to/myproject-build is excluded - and that is where this project also stores the built executables!

 

Apparently, when make within checkinstall goes on building for the first time, it can capture newly generated executable files - they will be listed in ${TMP_DIR}/newfiles; however, in my case, the problem is that the executables end up under the same directory where checkinstall is called; thus, at this dialog:

Some of the files created by the installation are inside the build
directory: /path/to/myproject-build

You probably don't want them to be included in the package,
especially if they are inside your home directory.
Do you want me to list them?  [n]: y
Should I exclude them from the package? (Saying yes is a good idea)  [y]: n

... I must, in fact, answer n - otherwise I'd get nothing included! I can then check the contents with:

dpkg --contents mytest.deb | less

However, then the problem is that checkinstall:

• also includes .o files, as well as .svn directories
• counts the absolute path as relative (will not automatically "send" executables to say, /usr/bin, and .sos to /usr/lib

 

In brief - some of the approaches above may get one to have a .deb which is not completely empty; but that doesn't mean one has only the needed files there, or that they would be routed to usual install destinations...

Well, hope this helps at least a bit,
Cheers!

Answer 2

I've had similar problems. In the end i followed this very simple, but fairly manual approach.

Place the files you want to package in debian/usr/bin for example. There's no need to complete the usual configure, make, make install steps.

Answer 3

The double use of sudo is the problem.

With a file install.sh like

#! /bin/bash
set -x
touch useless
cp useless /usr/share/useless

command

sudo checkinstall --pkgname useless -y ./install.sh

works while

sudo checkinstall --pkgname useless -y sudo ./install.sh
                                       ^^^^

shows

cp: cannot stat ‘//var/tmp/tmp.Au4ympTNlT/newfiles.tmp’: No such file or directory

and produces an empty package.