Debcraft – Easiest way to modify and build Debian packages

Summary

Debian packaging is notoriously hard. Far too many new contributors give up while trying, and many long-time contributors leave due to burnout from having to do too many thankless maintenance tasks. Some just skip testing their changes properly because it feels like too much toil.Debcraft is my attempt to solve this by automating all the boring stuff, and making it easier to learn the correct practices and helping new and old packagers better track changes in both source code and build artifacts.The challenge of declarative packaging codeUnlike how rpm or apk packages are done, the deb package sources by design avoid having one massive procedural packaging recipe. Instead, the packaging is defined in multiple declarative files in the debian/ subdirectory. For example, instead of a script running install -m 755 bin/btop /usr/bin/btop there is a file debian/btop.install containing the line usr/bin/btop.This makes the overall system more robust and reliable, and allows, for example, extensive static analysis to find problems without having to build the package. The notable exception is the debian/rules file, which contains procedural code that can modify any aspect of the package build. Almost all other files are declarative.Benefits include, among others, that the effect of a Debian-wide policy change can be relatively easily predicted by scanning what attributes and configurations all packages have declared.The drawback is that to understand the syntax and meaning of each file, one must understand which build tools read which files and traverse potentially multiple layers of abstraction. In my view, this is the root cause for most of the perceived complexity.Common complaints about .deb packagingRelated to the above, people learning Debian packaging frequently voice the following complaints:Debian has too many tools to learn, often with overlapping or duplicate functionality.Too much outdated and inconsistent documentation that makes learning the numerous tools needl...