How to build Ubuntu packages, so the install layout will exactly match the Ubuntu distro?

Question

I'm working on apache2 source codes which is `apt-get source' from the Ubuntu repository.

The apt-get decompressed the apache2-xxx.tar.gz and merged with apache2-xxx-ubuntu.diff. So I deem the directory apache2-xxx/ contains the Ubuntu-ized apache2 source.

But after configure and make install, I found the built result directory structure is different to what it is I have installed by `apt-get install apache2'.

For example, `apt-get install apache2' splits the module-specific configs from the httpd.conf to mods-available/*, and all modules are compiled in shared objects. But the default configure (./configure with no option) compiles all modules into a single executable. Though I can specify --enable-mods-shared=all to ./configure, but then the compile failed.

The question is not only to the option --enable-mods-shared, I want to know how to compile apache2 or generally, an Ubuntu source package for distribute. What's the configure options should I give to build a more common Ubuntu-like binaries?

Answer 1

You can use make -f ./debian/rules, and the bash-completion on that, to build piecemeal. Or use debuild to make it all at once. You'll see the compilation rules, configure options, and customisations in the debian/ directory.

Answer 2

Do you know checkinstall? Can it do the trick?