gem2deb is a set of tools to create Debian packages from Rubygems The workflow looks like: Download gem: gem fetch foo | v Create a tarball. It contains the gem spec as metadata.yml gem2tgz foo-1.2.gem | v Convert to a Debian source package with sane defaults: dh-make-ruby foo-1.2.tar.gz | v Modify, if needed | v Build the package: dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc Alternatively, you can use the gem2deb command, that tries to do everything automatically. The generated Debian source package uses Debhelper 7 with a specific build system called "ruby". That buildsystem uses the dh_ruby tool for the various steps (clean, build, test, install). Building from source and testing this package: ============================================== # install build-dependencies, look at the Build-Depends line # in debian/control # build the package dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc # install sudo debi # or simply: "rake install" Developers: Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@debian.org> Antonio Terceiro <terceiro@softwarelivre.org> License: GPLv3 or later Current status: gem2tgz and dh-make-ruby work. dh_ruby is not yet feature-comparable with setup.rb, and needs some work.