How do I control where my Debian package files are installed?

Question

I'm trying to create a debian packge of my PHP application and to upload to my PPA. I've been reading through the documentation but I am missing one important point:

How do I control in which directory my web-app gets installed to and which files are included? The PHP app does not need any compilation, so it is distributed in source form.

Steps already done:

• Created a name-1.0.tar.gz which contains all the source

• dh_make to setup the environment (although Im not sure which type i need in my case? (single binary, multiple binary, library) as I dont have a "binary" but just php script files).

• Edited the copyright/control/changelog files.

  • After all that, I invoke dpkg-buildpackage -S -rfakeroot and the package is created.

Problem: The package has been created, but there are no files within it. I would like to install my web-app to /var/www/, so how do I get the packaging system to include all my web-app's *.php files and install it to /var/www?

I usually build Debian files with dpkg -b where it simple "maps" alle directories to the according file system. So I usually have the following tree:

• DEBIAN
  • control
• var
  • www
    • myproject
    • .... all files and subfolders

The package installs in /var/www/myproject/ and everything is fine.

But as I need to publish now to my PPA (which requires signing, hashing etc.), I need to follow the packaging guide with the previously mentioned problems.

Answer 1

As for paths, I can tell you PPAs get extracted to /, and it's highly recommended to use autotools regardless of language of the source, so when a user performs the configure/make/make install the scripts take care of where to put everything.

I do not know why you are getting an empty package. Perhaps there is a log of the tools you are using somewhere? You'd like to think there's explicit output somewhere.