Build Debian Packages GitHub Action

This action builds Debian packages in a flexible environment.

It is mainly a shell wrapper around dpkg-buildpackage, using a configurable Docker image to install build dependencies in and build packages. Resulting .deb files and other build artifacts are moved to a specified place.

In some aspects, this action is comparable to pbuilder or sbuild (and it might be desireable to use those here in the future, instead of manually setting up a build environment and calling dpkg-buildpackage).

Usage

Basic Example

on: push

jobs:
  build-debs:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: jtdor/build-deb-action@v1
        env:
          DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS: noautodbgsym
        with:
          buildpackage-opts: --build=binary --no-sign

Inputs

All inputs have a default value or are optional.

apt-opts

Extra options to be passed to apt-get when installing build dependencies and extra packages.

Optional and empty by default.

artifacts-dir

Directory relative to the workspace where the built packages and other artifacts will be moved to.

Defaults to debian/artifacts in the workspace.

buildpackage-opts

Options to be passed to dpkg-buildpackage. See man dpkg-buildpackage.

Optional and empty by default.

docker-image

Name of a (Debian-based) Docker image to build packages inside or path of a Dockerfile in GITHUB_WORKSPACE to build a container from.

Defaults to debian:stable-slim.

extra-build-deps

Extra packages to be installed as “build dependencies”. This should rarely be used, build dependencies should be specified in the debian/control file.

By default, these packages are installed without their recommended dependencies. To change this, pass --install-recommends in apt-opts.

Optional and empty by default.

extra-docker-args

Additional command-line arguments passed to docker run when the build container is started. This might be needed if specific volumes or network settings are required.

Optional and empty by default.

host-arch

The architecture packages are built for. If this parameter is set, cross-compilation is set up with apt-get and dpkg-buildpackage as described in the Debian wiki.

Optional and defaults to the architecture the action is run on (likely amd64).

Basic example for cross-compilation:

- uses: jtdor/build-deb-action@v1
  with:
    host-arch: i386

source-dir

Directory relative to the workspace that contains the package sources, especially the debian/ subdirectory.

Defaults to the workspace.

Environment Variables

Environment variables work as you would expect. So you can use e.g. the DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS variable:

- uses: jtdor/build-deb-action@v1
  env:
    DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS: noautodbgsym

Motivation

There are other GitHub actions that wrap dpkg-buildpackage. At the time of writing, all of them had one or multiple limitations:

• Hard-coding too specific options,
• hard-coding one specific distribution as build environment,
• installing unnecessary packages as build dependencies,
• or expecting only exactly one .deb file.

This action’s goal is to not have any of these limitations.