Creating a package for Debian, with its headaches

This entry is going to be brief. It is about a not so pleasant experience creating a package for Debian.

In my work I have packaged several projects for Debian and this week I try to do it for a project based on QT. As I had already packaged other QT projects, I download one of them to copy/paste part of the contents of the debian/directory. At the time of executing the command debuild -b -uc -us it fails me during the execution of the dh_install helper. This is because the helper executes a binary that has just been compiled. 

After a lot of searching the Internet I find this comment. Basically if the files debian/*.dirs or debian/*.install are executable the helper dh_install will execute them and guess what was the first line of debian/install: the binary that was compiled as part of the package. And it turns out that this file when downloaded from the internet the OS for some reason put this bit. The documentation of the helper dh_install gives an idea in this regard when mentioning the limitations of it and how to overcome them. 

Conclusion: always verify that debian/*. dirs and debian/*. install do not have the executable bit (unless you really want to process them with something like dh_ *) since dh_install will try to execute these files with unpredictable consequences.

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