DH-DIST-ZILLA(7)

📦 version 1.4.1, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 dh-dist-zilla 💖

okay bestie, so this is the manual page for dh-dist-zilla — it lives in section 7 of the manual, and it's here to tell you about a little debhelper add-on that runs dzil (that's Dist::Zilla) while your package is building. no cap. 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

dh-dist-zilla — a debhelper add-on that runs dzil (Dist::Zilla) during the build. that's it, that's the vibe. 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

the dh-dist-zilla package gives you a sequence addon for debhelper 7 and above, and you can use it in two ways. pick your fighter. 👑

way #1: in debian/rules (since debhelper 7) 🎀

drop this in your rules file, exactly like this:

#!/usr/bin/make -f
export DH_VERBOSE=1
%:
    dh $@ --with dist-zilla

way #2: in debian/control (since debhelper 11.4) ✨

since debhelper 11.4 you can also just do it right in the control file, no rules-file drama needed:

Build-Depends: dh-sequence-dist-zilla

what both of these actually do 🔥

either variant is gonna:

  • call dzil build before dh_auto_configure
  • call dzil clean before dh_clean
  • and sprinkle the option -D build-directory onto all of these: dh_auto_configure, dh_auto_build, dh_auto_install, and dh_auto_test

it's giving "i do the tedious parts for you." main character energy fr. 💖

🧚 how to generate the .orig.tar.xz "upstream" tar-ball 🧚

a debian/rules file like the one above also hands you a get-orig-source target, and that target generates a source tar ball containing the minimal necessary contents — which is a whole different beast from the contents of the tar-ball for CPAN, because that one would need some additional, generated meta data files. so, less stuff. cleaner. slay. 🎀

run it like this:

make -f debian/rules get-orig-source

or, if your debian/rules file is executable, you can just call it directly, no make needed:

debian/rules get-orig-source

and if typing is simply not the moment (we've all been there 🙈), there's also a origtar alias for this target — it's named after the origtargz script from the devscripts package, iykyk:

debian/rules origtar

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

go read these too, bestie, they're all in the group chat:

👑 AUTHOR 👑

the icons behind all of this:

  • Elmar Heeb <elmar@heebs.ch> — wait, formatting that properly: Elmar Heeb <elmar@heebs.ch>
  • Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>
heads up: this page is for dh-dist-zilla, version v1.4.1, dated 2021-01-18. that's the whole thing, bestie — go build something iconic with it. 💅✨🫶
📦 where this page comes from