dh-make-golang is a tool to automatically create Debian packaging for Go packages. Its goal is to automate away as much of the work as possible when creating a Debian package for a Go library package.
All you need to specify is a Go package name. In your current working directory, a new directory will be created containing a git repository. Inside that repository, you’ll find the Go package’s source code plus the necessary Debian packaging files to build a Debian package. The packaging adheres to the pkg-go packaging guidelines and hence can be placed alongside the other team-maintained packages in pkg-go, hosted on Debian’s alioth.
For an introductory example, see this annotated demonstration of how to use dh-make-golang.
dh-make-golang makes heavy use of online resources to improve the resulting package. In no particular order and depending on where your package is hosted, dh-make-golang may query:
- By virtue of using
go get
, the specified Go package and all of its dependencies will be downloaded. This step can quickly cause dozens of megabytes to be transferred, so be careful if you are on a metered internet connection. - The output of filter-packages.sh, hosted on https://people.debian.org/~stapelberg/dh-make-golang/. This is used to figure out whether dependencies are already packaged in Debian, and whether you are about to duplicate somebody else’s work.
- GitHub’s API, to get the license, repository creator, description and README for Go packages hosted on GitHub.