Debmagic

Unified and futuristic developer tools for increased productivity in the Debian/Ubuntu ecosystem.

• create package build instructions in Python with debian/rules.py
• tooling do perform packaging itself: building and testing in isolated container environments

Important

Debmagic's goal: make Debian packaging modern, robust & easy - while being backwards compatible.

---

Included features:

• for debian/rules.py
  • optional dh backward compatibility module
  • language and buildsystem helper modules
• maintainer tools
  • debmagic build - isolated package building
  • debmagic check - isolated package linting
  • debmagic test - isolated package testing
• debugging tools
  • debmagic shell - enter current running/finished package environment

Debmagic packaging

Usually, debian/rules is written as shell-oneliners in a Makefile.

Debmagic allows straight-forward conversion to Python, which is especially useful if the packaging is more complex, like openldap, dovecot, samba or gcc.

Example debian/rules.py

For example, the htop rules file from Ubuntu 24.04 equivalent in debmagic native Python code could look like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from debmagic.v0 import Build, autotools, dh, package

pkg = package(
    preset=[dh],
    maint_options="hardening=+all",
)

if pkg.buildflags.DEB_HOST_ARCH_OS == "linux":
    configure_params = ["--enable-affinity", "--enable-delayacct"]
else:
    configure_params = ["--enable-hwloc"]

# hurd-i386 can open /proc (nothing there) and /proc/ which works
if pkg.buildflags.DEB_HOST_ARCH_OS == "hurd":
    configure_params += ["--with-proc=/proc/"]
else:
    configure_params += ["--enable-sensors"]


@pkg.stage
def configure(build: Build):
    autotools.configure(
        build,
        ["--enable-openvz", "--enable-vserver", "--enable-unicode", *configure_params],
    )

pkg.pack()

debhelper compatibility

For even more straightforward conversion of debian/rules Makefiles, Debmagic can use dh and provides dh overrides:

from debmagic.v0 import dh

# specify dh arguments:
dhp = dh.Preset("--with=python3 --builddirectory=build")
pkg = package(preset=dhp)

# if needed, define optional overrides:
@dhp.override
def dh_auto_install(build: Build):
    print("dh override worked :)")
    build.cmd("dh_auto_install --max-parallel=1")

pkg.pack()

Custom functions

To add custom functions directly usable from CLI (like custom debian/rules targets for maintainers):

pkg = package(...)

@pkg.custom_function
def something_custom(some_param: int, another_param: str = "some default"):
    print(f"you passed {some_param=} {another_param=}")

pkg.pack()

This function can be directly called with:

./debian/rules.py something-custom --another-param=test 1337

you passed some_param=test another_param=1337

And generates automatic help for:

./debian/rules.py something-custom --help

Documentation

To do packaging with debmagic, please read the documentation!.

Contributing

Debmagic can always use more features and modules! You can also just request features or report bugs - this project is happy about your contributions!

• Contributor documentation
• Issue tracker
• Code contributions
• Development roadmap

Contact

To directly reach developers and other users, we have chat rooms. For questions, suggestions, problem support, please join and just ask!

Contact	Where?
Issue Tracker	SFTtech/debmagic
Matrix Chat	#sfttech:matrix.org
Support us

License

Released under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later, LICENSE for details.