Metapackages make it easier to select programs. For example, Debian has a list of educational programs, and to install all of them by selecting a single program you use the debianedu package, which is a metapackage that has all the educational packages as dependencies.

That is how Ubuntu works with Kubuntu, Xubuntu and its other flavors: simply a metapackage that handles each version of Ubuntu.

The program in Debian for creating metapackages is called equivs.

To install it, run aptitude install equivs.

This package provides two programs:

  • equivs-control: Creates a file like the control file of Debian packages, where the maintainer information, the package version, the dependencies and other things are handled.
  • equivs-build: Builds the metapackage from the file created by equivs-control.

To create the template, run the command with the package name: equivs-control accesibilidad. This creates the following template:

### Commented entries have reasonable defaults.
### Uncomment to edit them.
Section: misc
Priority: optional
Standards-Version: 3.6.2

Package:
# Version:
# Maintainer: Your Name
# Pre-Depends:
# Depends:
# Recommends:
# Suggests:
# Provides:
# Replaces:
# Architecture: all
# Copyright:
# Changelog:
# Readme:
# Extra-Files:
Description:
long description and info
.
second paragraph

This file handles the package section, the priority, the Debian policy version (currently 3.8.0), the package name, the version, the maintainer name, the dependencies (pre-depends, depends, recommends, provides and replaces), copyright, changelog, readme, extra files and, finally, the package description split into 2 parts: a short description and a long one.

Next I show the file for accessibility, which will handle the dependencies of the following packages:

  • brltty: Braille
  • brltty-x11: Braille
  • libcolorblind-dev: Color blindness
  • libcolorblind0: Color blindness
  • gnome-orca: Orca screen reader
Section: misc
Priority: optional
Standards-Version: 3.8.0

Package: accesibilidad
Version: 1.0
Maintainer: Ernesto Nadir Crespo Avila
Depends: brltty, brltty-x11, libcolorblind-dev, libcolorblind0, gnome-orca
Architecture: all
Description: Metapaquete para la instalacion de aplicaciones de accesibilidad
Metapaquete para la instalacion de aplicaciones de accesibilidad para personas invidentes

To build the package, run the command equivs-build accesibilidad:

ecrespo@canaima:~/canaima2/accesibilidad$ equivs-build accesibilidad
dh_testdir
dh_testroot
dh_clean -k
dh_testdir
dh_testroot
dh_install
dh_installdocs
dh_installchangelogs
dh_compress
dh_fixperms
dh_installdeb
dh_gencontrol
dh_md5sums
dh_builddeb
dpkg-deb: construyendo el paquete `accesibilidad' en `../accesibilidad_1.0_all.deb'.

The package has been created.
Attention, the package has been created in the current directory,
not in ".." as indicated by the message above!

Then running ls shows the package accesibilidad_1.0_all.deb.

This package cannot be installed with dpkg because it will fail: dpkg does not handle dependencies. It is more useful to use apt-get or aptitude, but to do that the package has to be uploaded to a local repository so that it can be installed with apt-get or aptitude (how to create a local repository in the next post).

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