Packaging Linux Kernel for Debian

Supported Debian versions:

• 9 --- Stretch;
• 8 --- Jessie, with updates from jessie-backports.

Note, that Debian Jessie is supported only with backports updates installed due to different packaging and dependencies schemes. To install updates add the repo to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb https://deb.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main contrib non-free

And install all the available updates:

apt-get update
apt-get -t jessie-backports dist-upgrade

Prerequisites

Sources ropository must be exist in /etc/apt/sources.list:

# For Debian 9 Stretch
deb-src https://deb.debian.org/debian stretch main
# For Debian 8 Jessie
deb-src https://deb.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main

All the necessary packages can be installed with single command:

apt-get build-dep linux

Variables DEBEMAIL and DEBFULLNAME must be exported before updating change logs. E.g.:

export DEBEMAIL="[email protected]"
export DEBFULLNAME="Tempesta Technologies, Inc."

Packaging

Sadly, packaging Linux kernel is not so simple. It is packaged as foreign package, so packaging directory contains a number of patches from Debian team. Packaging system was forked from git://anonscm.debian.org/kernel/linux.git.

Copy pkg/linux/debian to separate empty directory. At least 25GB of free space must be available.

Prepare orig tarball - tarball that contains sources of original package. Unpack it to package directory and apply patches from debian/pacthes/. This can be done in one of the following ways:

• uscan. This command prepares origin tarball automatically, if original git repo have tag with newer version than stated in debian/changelog. Refer to debian/watch for more info.

• debian/rules get-orig-source && debian/rules orig to make the same for the current version.

Generate control file:

debian/rules debian/control

Finally create the set of the packages:

dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us -jN

Where N - number of concurrent jobs.

That will take a while. For more info refer to Rebuilding official Debian kernel packages manual.

Publishing on Github

Once package is build, commit used to build package must be marked with tag formatted as:

<distro_name>-<distro_version>/<sources_version>

e.g:
debian-9/0.5.0-1
debian-8/0.5.0-pre7
centos-7.2/0.5.0-1

After tag is pushed to Github, new release must be assigned to the tag. That allows to publish packages and changelog in one place. Normally changelog on Releases page should follow sources changelog.

TODOs

1. Instead of publishing packages on Github Releases page, distribute software to end users using custom Debian/Centos/other repositories.

2. When packaging linux, use vanilla sources and apply Tempesta-Tech patches in the same way Debian/Centos maintainers applies their own patches. This differs from current aproach, when the prepatched kernel is downloaded from Tempesta-Tech kernel repo.