AutoDeb Still Being Worked On For Automatically Generating Debian Packages

AutoDeb is a long-standing effort to try to automate the creation of Debian packages as much as possible for trying to determine necessary dependencies of a program, will configure/build the program for Autotools-based projects, and end up generating a Debian binary package. AutoDeb was worked on as part of this year's Google Summer of Code for automatic Debian packaging.

AutoDeb saw some renewed attention this year as part of Google Summer of Code 2018. The purpose of AutoDeb isn't to obsolete Debian package maintainers, but rather to expedite the process for creating Debian backports, upgrading packages against their latest upstream sources, and provide for Debian packaging of "simple" Ruby/Python/Perl programs. More details on the GSoC 2018 work is outlined via the Debian Wiki.

For end-users this could mean a quicker turnaround time before seeing Debian support for new upstream program releases and also better automatic testing of Debian packages. Right now the success rate of AutoDeb in its current state is 45% of backports being successful and 31% of package upgrades turning out successful. Among the shortcomings right now are not automatically refreshing any necessary packages, unsatisfiable dependencies, and bugs in their infrastructure/code.

Moving forward those working on AutoDeb want to provide a web-based interface for information on their packages, detecting new candidates automatically, supporting more architectures, rebuilding reverse dependencies, and better documentation.

Learn more about AutoDeb via the DebConf18 presentation embedded below by developer Alexandre Viau.