In order to build a &debian; package from the &git; repository you use: &git-buildpackage;. This builds the upstream tarball as will be described below and invokes &debuild; to build the package. To use another build command you can use the --git-builder option as described later in the manual but &debuild; is nice since it can invoke lintian. During the development phase (when you're either not on the debian-branch or when you have uncommitted changes in your repository) you'll usually use: &git-buildpackage; --git-ignore-new If &git-buildpackage; doesn't find a valid upstream tarball it will create one by looking at the tag matching the upstream version. To change this behaviour see the --git-upstream-tree option. If you want to recreate the original tarball using the additional information from the pristine-tar branch you have to specify the --git-pristine-tar option. This will make sure the upstream tarball matches exactly the one imported. Using this option is the recommended way of recreating the upstream tarball. Once you're satisfied with the build and want to do a release you commit all your changes and issue: &git-buildpackage; --git-tag This will again build the debian package and tag the final result after extracting the current version from the changelog. If you want &gpg; signed tags you can use the --git-sign and --git-keyid options. To save typing these option can be specified via the configuration files. You can futhermore change the tag format used when creating tags with the debian-tag option, the default is debian/<version>. Tools like &svn-buildpackage; use a separate build-area. To achieve a similar behaviour with &git-buildpackage; use the --git-export-dir option: &git-buildpackage; --git-export-dir=../build-area/ This will export the head of the ecurrent branch to ../build-area/package-version, build the package. If you don't want to export the current branch head you can use --git-export to export any treeish object, here are some examples: &git-buildpackage; --git-export-dir=../build-area --git-export=debian/0.4.3 &git-buildpackage; --git-export-dir=../build-area --git-export=etch &git-buildpackage; --git-export-dir=../build-area --git-export=8caed309653d69b7ab440e3d35abc090eb4c6697 &git-buildpackage; --git-export-dir=../build-area --git-export=INDEX &git-buildpackage; --git-export-dir=../build-area --git-export=WC The special argument INDEX exports the state of the current index which can be used to include staged but uncommitted changes in the build. Whereas the special argument WC exports the current working copy as is. If you want to default to build in a separate build area you can specify the directory to use in the gbp.conf. [git-buildpackage] # use a build area relative to the git repository export-dir=../build-area # to use the same build area for all packages use an absolute path: #export-dir=/home/debian-packages/build-area &git-buildpackage; will cleanup the build-area after a successful build. If you want to keep the build tree use --git-dont-purge. Besides the commands for cleaning the package build dir (cleaner) and building the package (builder) you can also invoke hooks during the package build: immediately before a build (prebuild), after a successful build (postbuild) and after creating a tag (posttag). Typical applications are running lintian or pushing changes into a remote repository. &git-buildpackage; exports several variables into the posttag's environment (for details see the ). To invoke &lintian; we need to tell it where to find the changes file: git-buildpackage --git-postbuild='lintian $GBP_CHANGES_FILE' To call &lintian; automatically after each successful build add: postbuild=lintian $GBP_CHANGES_FILE to your .gbp.conf. If you want to push your changes automatically after a successful build and tag you can use &git-buildpackage;'s posttag hook. A very simple invocation would look like this: git-buildpackage --git-tag --git-posttag="git push && git push --tags" This assumes you have set up a remote repository to push to in .git/config. Usually you want to make sure you don't push out any unrelated changes into the remote repository. This is handled by the following hook which only pushes out the created tag to where you pulled from and also forwards the corresponding remote branch to that position: #!/bin/sh -e # # gbp-posttag-push: post tag hook to push out the newly created tag and to # forward the remote branch to that position if ! REMOTE=$(git config --get branch."${GBP_BRANCH}".remote); then REMOTE=origin fi if [ "$GBP_TAG" ]; then echo "Pushing $GBP_TAG to $REMOTE" git push "$REMOTE" "$GBP_TAG" else echo "GBP_TAG not set." exit 1 fi if [ "$GBP_SHA1" ] && [ "$GBP_BRANCH" ]; then git push "$REMOTE" "$GBP_SHA1":"$GBP_BRANCH" else echo "GBP_SHA1 or GBP_BRANCH not set." exit 1 fi echo "done." GBP_TAG, GBP_SHA1 and GBP_BRANCH are passed to the hook via the environment. To call this hook automatically upon tag creation add: posttag="gbp-posttag-push" to your .gbp.conf and make sure gbp-push is somewhere in your $PATH. On Debian systems a more complete example can be found in /usr/share/doc/examples/git-buildpackage/examples/gbp-posttag-push. &git-buildpackage; exports several variables into the postexport's environment (for details see the ). The motivation for the postexport action is to allow further adjustment of the sources prior to building the package. A typical use case scenario is to allow creating multiple source and binary packages from one Debian branch - e.g. the bootstrap gcc and in the next stage the full gcc. The postexport action, postpones the creation of the upstream tarball, so that the metadata for creating it is already present in the exported source tree. The example postexport script below (crosstoolchain-expand.sh) expands changelog, lintian override files, rules and control files according to an environment variable 'PKG_FLAVOR'. Sample gbp.conf - enables source tree export by specifying the export directory: [git-buildpackage] # use a build area relative to the git repository export-dir = ../build-area # disable the since the sources are being exported first cleaner = # post export script that handles expansion of Debian specific files postexport = crosstoolchain-expand.sh Sample postexport script: crosstoolchain-expand.sh #!/bin/sh # # Purpose: this script is intended for creating multiple source and # binary Debian packages from one source tree. It can be used in # conjunction with git-buildpackage that support a postexport hook # # A typical use is preparing a bootstrap gcc package that is needed # for building newlib and then preparing a full gcc package from the # same source tree. The user may specify the package flavor via # PKG_FLAVOR environmental variable. # # # The script expands/processes the following files: # # - changelog.tmpl is converted to standard Debian changelog # # # - all binary package lintian override template files are expanded # and renamed to the requested package flavor # # - source package lintian override template file is expanded and # renamed # # - rules.$PKG_FLAVOR and control.$PKG_FLAVOR are renamed to rules and # control resp. # the template string has been carefully chosen, so that # e.g. changelogs that refer to the source package can still be # processed by dch/git-dch resp. TMPL_STR=-XXXXXX # by default replace string for the template is empty REPLACE_STR= if [ -n "$PKG_FLAVOR" ]; then REPLACE_STR=-$PKG_FLAVOR fi REPLACE_EXPR="s/$TMPL_STR/$REPLACE_STR/g" # actual processing of relevant files cd debian # expand the template changelog # remove the symlinked version rm changelog chglog_tmpl=changelog.tmpl [ -f "$chglog_tmpl" ] || { echo "Missing changelog template (debian/$chglog_tmpl)" exit 1 } cat changelog.tmpl | sed -e "$REPLACE_EXPR" > changelog rm changelog.tmpl # process binary package lintian overrides - each override must match # its package name for f in *.lintian-overrides.tmpl; do outfile=${f%.tmpl} [ -f "$f" ] || { echo "Missing lintian override files for binary packages" exit 1 } cat $f | sed -e "$REPLACE_EXPR" > ${outfile/$TMPL_STR/$REPLACE_STR} rm $f done # process the only source package lintian override source_lintian=source/lintian-overrides.tmpl cat $source_lintian | sed -e "$REPLACE_EXPR" > ${source_lintian%.tmpl} rm $source_lintian # rules and control file are package flavor specific [ -f rules.$PKG_FLAVOR ] && mv rules.$PKG_FLAVOR rules [ -f control.$PKG_FLAVOR ] && mv control.$PKG_FLAVOR control rm -f rules.* control.* exit 0 You can use &gbp-pq; to handle patches. See for an example workflow. In order to avoid a patched (unclean) source tree after the build you can use &dpkg-source;'s unapply-patches option and tell &git; to ignore the .pc directory. /usr/share/doc/git-buildpackage/examples/gbp-configure-unpatched-source sets up these two files for you.