Building a Simple Deb Package
All of the hip kids today are into deploying packages and complex systems with things like Ansible, Docker, Chef, Puppet, Vagrent and Salt Stack. While these deployment tools are awesome, you should not forget about good old fashioned system packages for application deployment. I fully understand there are times when some of these newer deployment tools are a better fit, but, as time goes on, I run across more and more overly complicated and convoluted deployment procedures using these new tools when a simple deb or rpm package could be used. Maybe Im just oldschool, but whenever possible, I prefer to handle application deployment with system packages, such as debs or rpms.
Creating deb packages to deploy applications in Debian or Ubuntu is a fairly simple process. However, I have found that the majority of existing documentation for doing so is overly verbose or more complex than needed. This writeup aims to summaries the process of creating deb packages in just a few simple steps.
Here is a short summary of what this writeup covers:
- How to create a bare bones deb package
- How to optionally add package configuration files
- How to optionally add package dependancies
- How to optionally add package scripts that run before or after installation
