Creating Debian packages from Cabal package

Packaging a Cabal library package with haskell-devscripts for unstable

This is the recommended way to package a Cabal library for Debian now. Example of how a package could be created, using:

• $package as the package name
• $version as the version of the package.
• $maintainerName as the name of the maintainer
• $maintainerEmail as the email of the maintainer
• $packageShortDescription as the Cabal short description of the package
• $packageLongDescription as the Cabal long description of the package

1. wget http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/$package/$version/$package-$version.tar.gz -O haskell-${package}_$version.orig.tar.gz
2. tar -zxf haskell-$package_$version.orig.tar.gz
3. cd $package-$version
4. mkdir debian

5. cat << EOF > debian/control
   Source: haskell-$package
   Section: libdevel
   Priority: optional
   Maintainer: $maintainerName <$maintainerEmail>
   Standards-Version: 3.8.1
   Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 5), cdbs, dpatch, haskell-devscripts (>= 0.6.15+nmu1), ghc6, ghc6-prof
   Build-Depends-Indep: ghc6-doc, haddock, hscolour
   Homepage: http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/$package/package/$package
   
   Package: libghc6-$package-dev
   Architecture: any
   Depends: ${haskell:Depends}, ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}
   Suggests: libghc6-$package-doc (= ${binary:Version}), libghc6-$package-prof (= ${binary:Version})
   Description: $packageShortDescription
    This package provides a library for the Haskell programming language.
    See http://www.haskell.org/ for more information on Haskell.
    .
    $packageLongDescription
   
   Package: libghc6-$package-prof
   Architecture: any
   Depends: libghc6-$package-dev (= ${binary:Version}), ${haskell:Depends}, ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}
   Description: $packageShortDescription; profiling libraries
    This package provides a library for the Haskell programming language,
    compiled for profiling.
    See http://www.haskell.org/ for more information on Haskell.
    .
    $packageLongDescription
   
   Package: libghc6-$package-doc
   Section: doc
   Architecture: all
   Depends: ${misc:Depends}
   Recommends: ghc6-doc (>= 6.8.2)
   Suggests: libghc6-$package-dev (= ${binary:Version})
   Description: $packageShortDescription; documentation
    This package provides the documentation for a library for the Haskell
    programming language.
    See http://www.haskell.org/ for more information on Haskell.
    .
    $packageLongDescription
   EOF

   1. echo 5 > debian/compat
   2. Create debian/copyright with your favorite editor:

   Debianised by ...
   Author ...
   Copyright: BSD ... /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD ...
   EOF

6. cat << EOF > debian/rules
   #!/usr/bin/make -f
   
   include /usr/share/cdbs/1/rules/debhelper.mk
   include /usr/share/cdbs/1/class/hlibrary.mk
   EOF

7. cat << EOF > debian/watch
   version=3
   http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/$package/([\d\.]+)/$package-([\d\.]+).tar.gz
   EOF

8. dch --create -D unstable --package haskell-$package --newversion $version-1
9. debuild -us -uc

Packaging a Cabal library package in 10 easy steps

This process requires the haskell-utils package.

Here is an example on was created a new Debian package out of an Haskell Cabal library package: mtl.

1. wget http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/mtl/1.0/mtl-1.0.tar.gz -O haskell-mtl_1.0.1.orig.tar.gz
2. tar -zxf haskell-mtl_1.0.1.orig.tar.gz
3. cd mtl-1.0
4. mkdir -p debian/varfiles
5. Create debian/varfiles/varfile with your favorite editor:

       maintainer="Ian Lynagh (wibble) <igloo@debian.org>"
       short_description="Haskell monad transformer library for GHC"
       long_description=" MTL is a monad transformer library, inspired by the paper \"Functional
       Programming with Overloading and Higher-Order Polymorphism\",
       by Mark P Jones (<http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~mpj/>), Advanced School
       of Functional Programming, 1995."
       c_dev_libs=""
       extra_build_deps=""

   (Pay attention to the leading space in long_description. It's necessary due to the format of Debian's control file.)
6. Create debian/copyright with your favorite editor:

       Debianised by ...
       Author ...
       Copyright: BSD ... /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD ...
       EOF

7. dch --create -D unstable --package haskell-mtl --newversion 1.0.1-1
8. update-debian-haskell-files
9. debian/rules update-generated-files
10. debuild -us -uc

With luck the .cabal file will provide most of the text for steps 5 and 6.

When making future changes, apart from adding a changelog entry (use dch), only steps 9 and 10 need to be repeated.

Even if packaging Haskell libraries seems easy, the Debian Policy and the Developers Reference contains a lot of valuable informations on how to create a policy compliant Debian package.

Please subscribe to the debian-haskell mailling-list if you are interested in creating new Haskell packages for Debian.

Packaging a Cabal program package in N easy steps

TBD