Debhelper is a collection of programs that can be used in debian/rules files to automate common tasks. For further documentation, see the man pages for dh_* commands. To help you get started, I've included an example of a debian/rules file that uses debhelper commands extensivly. See /usr/doc/debhelper/examples/rules . Notes on multiple binary packages: --------------------------------- If your source package generates more than one binary package, debhelper programs will default to acting on all binary packages when run. If your source package happens to generate one architecture dependent package, and another architecture independent package, this is not the correct behavior, because you need to generate the architecture dependent packages in the binary-arch debian/rules target, and the architecture independent packages in the binary-indep debian/rules target. To faciliatate this, as well as give you more control over which packages are acted on by debhelper programs, all debhelper programs accept the following parameters: -a Act on architecture dependent packages -i Act on architecture independent packages -ppackage Act on the package named "package" (may be repeated multiple times) These parameters are cumulative. If none are given, the tools default to effecting all packages. See examples/rules.multi for an example of how to use this. -- Joey Hess