Differences from makepkg
makedeb is based on (and is originated in the codebase of) makepkg, the packaging tool used on Arch Linux. Likewise, most of the behavior in makedeb is the same as makepkg, but there are a few changes that have been made to work better in the packaging system for .deb packages.
The values in the arch
value are taken from the output of dpkg --print-architecture
. makepkg on the other hand uses an architecture similar to the output of uname -m
. This means that most architectures you’d find in makepkg-styled PKGBUILD will likely not work with makedeb, and will need to be changed.
In practice, it looks like this (for the x86_64
architecture as an example):
In makepkg, you’d do this:
arch=('x86_64')
But with makedeb, you would use this instead:
arch=('amd64')
In makepkg, backup entries are specified with no leading forward slash:
backup=('etc/pkgname.conf')
makedeb on the other hand requires all entries to start with a forward slash instead:
backup=('/etc/pkgname.conf')