Sometimes we feel frustrated when we have to manage large number of files which we need to deploy some application. The files might be scripts, some packages and source codes also. So, to make the process simple, we just create a Debian file installer which packages everything we need. The most interesting thing is we can define the directory structure for the application, like if we need some folder after installation, we can define folder inside the debian installer. We also have post-installation, pre-remove and post remove script files to make the task more simple.
So, what do we need to create a Debian installer?
I have found two important explanations on how we can make it possible. Lets have a look at
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-debpkg/index.html
The following also helped me(it seems to be quite old article though)
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Debian-Binary-Package-Building-HOWTO/
We need the following two packages
build-essentials (it is already intalled in most of the linux systems)
dpkg-dev
We use the following commands to create the package:
dpkg -b directory package.deb
There is a good tool called lentian, we can install it to find out the problem. It is a like required tool while creating the debian installer.
The above mentioned links are quite informative.