I’m enthusiast xubuntu user and I use deb packages daily. Deb packages are an awesome way to deploy software and manage it for any kind of platform. Nevertheless,

• not all software in the world comes natively packaged for the deb system
• there exist several (not straightforward) ways to create deb packages
• sometimes you just need a quick and dirty solution

Deb packages are just GNU ar archives and they are very easy to create. I like the arch-linux PKGBUILD files idea; you have one text file with all the instructions needed to

1. download the software
2. create the destination directories
3. compile the software
4. create an archive file with all binary files, ready to be installed (with pacman)

So here I suggest something similar; the hello.buildeb file performs the aforementioned steps for the example software hello world. I did this, so every time I need to package my software on the fly I just have to copy this buildeb file and modify few strings et voila’! An installable deb package is ready!

Disclaimer

This is bad! You really want to study how to package properly your software and not to use this buildeb file system! To have a taste on how little compliant this method is with the debian standard, you can launch the lintian utility program and check all the errors/warings.

$>lintian hello.deb