QUICK START:

You can either run cabal-debian, or for more power and flexibility you can put a Debianize.hs script in the package's debian subdirectory.

To see what your debianization would produce, or how it differs from the debianization already present:

% cabal-debian -n

This is equivalent to the library call

% ghc -e 'System.Environment.withArgs ["-n"] $ Debian.Debianize.performDebianization Debian.Debianize.debianDefaults'

To actually create the debianization and then build the debs,

% ghc -e 'Debian.Debianize.performDebianization Debian.Debianize.debianDefaults'
% sudo dpkg-buildpackage

At this point you may need a script to achieve specific packaging goals. Put this this in debian/Debianize.hs:

import Control.Lens
import Data.Map as Map
import Data.Set as Set
import Debian.Relation (BinPkgName(BinPkgName), Relation(Rel))
import Debian.Debianize
main = performDebianization $ do
  debianDefaults
  (debInfo . binaryDebDescription (BinPkgName "cabal-debian") . relations . depends) %= (++ (rels "apt-file, debian-policy, debhelper, haskell-devscripts (>= 0.8.19)"))

Then to test it,

% runhaskell debian/Debianize.hs -n

and to run it for real:

% runhaskell debian/Debianize.hs

DESIGN OVERVIEW

The three phases of the operation of the system are Input -> Finalization -> Output.

Input

Module Debian.Debianize.Input - gather inputs using IO operations and customization functions, from the .cabal file, an existing debianization, and so on. This information results in a value of type Atoms. Modules Types, Lenses, Inputs.

Customize

Make modifications to the input values

Finalization

Module Debian.Debianize.Finalize - Fill in any information missing from Atoms that is required to build the debianization based on the inputs and our policy decisions.

Debianize

Module Debian.Debianize.Files - Compute the paths and files of the debianization from the Atoms value.

Output

Module Debian.Debianize.Output - Perform a variety of output operations on the debianzation - writing or updating the files in a debian directory, comparing two debianizations, validate a debianization (ensure two debianizations match in source and binary package names), or describe a debianization.

There is also a high level function to run a script that runs this entire pipeline when it finds from a script found in a debian/Debianize.hs file.