Is it possible to create a deb package for a python script?

Question

I would like to know if it is possible to create a debian package for a python file ?

I thought to use cx_Freeze to have an executable file and then to create the package this is really easy but without do this I mean just for a python file can I generate a debian package for my python file ?

And how can I do this ?

Thank you !

Answer 1

What follows is a basic example of how a source package for a python script might look. While most of the packaging tutorials are a bit complex, they can really help if you hit a problem. That said, I first learned the basics of Debian packaging by simply looking at Debian packages. apt-get source something similar and learn by example.

Here's your basic source package layout:

my-script/
    -- myScript
    -- debian/
        -- changelog
        -- copyright
        -- compat
        -- rules
        -- control
        -- install

Run dch --create in the directory to create a properly formatted debian/changelog entry.

debian/copyright should look like:

Format: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/
Upstream-Name: myScript
Upstream-Contact: Name, <email@address>

Files: *
Copyright: 2017, Name, <email@address>
License: (GPL-2+ | LGPL-2 | GPL-3 | whatever)
 Full text of licence.
 .
 Unless there is a it can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses

debian/compat can just be: 7

debian/rules:

#!/usr/bin/make -f

%:
    dh $@ --with python2

Note that there must be "tab" before dh $@ --with python2, not spaces.

debian/control:

Source: my-script
Section: python
Priority: optional
Maintainer: Name, <email@address>
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7),
               python (>= 2.6.6-3~)
Standards-Version: 3.9.2
X-Python-Version: >= 2.6


Package: my-script
Architecture: all
Section: python
Depends: python-appindicator, ${misc:Depends}, ${python:Depends}
Description: short description
 A long description goes here.
 .
 It can contain multiple paragraphs

debian/install:

myScript usr/bin/

This file indicates which file will be installed into which folder.

Now build it with debuild --no-tgz-check

This will create a functional deb package. Lintian is going to throw a few warnings regarding the lack of an orig.tar.gz, but unless you plan on creating a proper upstream project that makes tarball releases you'll probably just want to ignore that for now.