10 years ago, when I wanted to package my utility, there were 3-4 documentation snippets, each of which usually used different set of utilities.
- Should I create the package boilerplate with dh_make or debmake? The structure they create differs.
- What's the name of command which I use to update the version in changelog? deb... no, dh_... no, ... it's `dch`!
- You manage patches with `quilt`, but where do I get `dquilt` mentioned in the documentation? It's not in any package! Oh, it just an alias you should grab from `Chapter 3. Modifying the source` documentation and add into your .bashrc! And also `~/.quiltrc-dpkg`, or nothing would work.
- Packaging: dpkg-buildpackage, debmake, or maybe pbuilder?
- How do I append CFLAGS? It's DEB_CFLAGS_MAINT_APPEND, thanks dh_make comment inside the rule file! Too bad if you've created the structure with debmake!
- dpkg-gensymbols: warning: some new symbols appeared in the symbols file
- dh_missing: error: missing files, aborting
But to Debian's credit, once you've done everything more or less correctly, you can use all the power of the build system. It's very easy to cross-compile software, just a matter of a single command. On other systems it's usually much harder.