A quick guide to debian metapackages

A metapackage is a package which do not contain any files to be installed. Instead it have dependencies to other packages. There are several uses for metapackages, I use them for easy installation of packages I often use, when installing debian or xubuntu on a new computer.

So just for this guide, I am going to make the metapackage depend on some of the packages I use:

• mc
• audacious
• erlang-base
• lynx
• geany
• sshfs
• dsniff
• aircrack-ng
• nmap
• wine

First of, you need to make the directory structure to hold the files for your metapackage. The directory’s name should be the same as the package name. In this example, the package name is bredsaal-laptop:

mkdir -p ~/packages/bredsaal-laptop/DEBIAN

Now create the two files necesary for the metapackage to build:

cd ~/packages/bredsaal-laptop/DEBIAN; touch postinst; touch control

Insert the following text into the control file:

Package: bredsaal-laptop
Version: 0.1
Section: main
Priority: optional
Architecture: all
Depends: mc, audacious, erlang-base, lynx, geany, sshfs, dsniff, aircrack-ng, nmap, wine
Installed-Size:
Maintainer: Jannich Brendle
Description: A metapackage just for me.

And this text into the postinst file:

#!/bin/sh
# postinst script for bredsaal_laptop
#
# see: dh_installdeb(1)
set -e

case "$1" in
configure)
## Perhaps something needs to be configured in the future.
echo "Congratulations."
;;

abort-upgrade|abort-remove|abort-deconfigure)
;;

*)
echo "postinst called with unknown argument `$1'" >&2
exit 1
;;
esac

#DEBHELPER#

exit 0

Now, to gererate your metapackage:

cd ~/packages/; chmod 555 bredsaal-laptop/DEBIAN/postinst; dpkg-deb -b bredsaal-laptop bredsaal-laptop.deb

Now, your package should build and be ready to install like this:

sudo gdebi bredsaal-laptop.deb

Related posts:

• Torchlight under Wine on Ubuntu 9.10
• Installing apt-p2p on Ubuntu
• Running Charon in Wine
• Downloading YouTube videos using Debian or Ubuntu
• Installing java on a virtual private server (debian)

Tags: debian, linux, metapackages