Build Status:

Available Keys

This command will obtain all of the information that it needs from the Cargo.toml file, so it is necessary to have filled out enough information in the file for the Debian binary package to be created. Cargo.toml already features a number of fields that are immediately useful. These fields are name, version, license, license-file, description, readme, homepage, and repository. However, as these fields are not enough, you may also define a new table, [package.metadata.deb] that will contain maintainer, copyright, license-file, depends, extended-description, section, priority, and assets.

Key Descriptions

• maintainer: The person maintaining the Debian packaging. If not present, the first author is used.
• copyright: To whom and when the copyright of the software is granted. If not present, the list of authors is used.
• license-file: The location of the license and the amount of lines to skip at the top. If not present, package-level license-file is used.
• depends: The runtime dependencies of the project, which are automatically generated with the $auto keyword.
• extended-description: An extended description of the project — the more detailed the better.
• section: The application category that the software belongs to.
• priority: Defines if the package is required or optional.
• assets: Files to be included in the package and the permissions to assign them. If assets are not specified, then defaults are taken from binaries explicitly listed in [[bin]] (copied to /usr/bin/) and package readme (copied to usr/share/doc/…).
  • The first argument of each asset is the location of that asset in the Rust project.
  • The second argument is where the file will be copied.
    • If is argument ends with / it will be inferred that the target is the directory where the file will be copied.
    • Otherwise, it will be inferred that the source argument will be renamed when copied.
  • The third argument is the permissions (octal string) to assign that file.
• features: List of Cargo features to use when building the package.
• default-features: whether to use default crate features in addition to the features list (default true).

Running cargo deb

Upon running cargo deb from the base directory of your Rust project, the Debian package will be created in target/debian. If you would like to handle the build process yourself, you can use cargo deb --no-build so that the cargo-deb command will not attempt to rebuild your project.

Cargo Deb Example

[package.metadata.deb]
maintainer = "Michael Aaron Murphy <mmstickman@gmail.com>"
copyright = "2016, Michael Aaron Murphy <mmstickman@gmail.com>"
license-file = ["LICENSE", "4"]
extended-description = """\
A simple subcommand for the Cargo package manager for \
building Debian packages from Rust projects."""
depends = "$auto"
section = "utility"
priority = "optional"
assets = [
    ["target/release/cargo-deb", "usr/bin/", "755"],
    ["README.md", "usr/share/doc/cargo-deb/README", "644"],
]

Systemd Manager Example

[package.metadata.deb]
maintainer = "Michael Aaron Murphy <mmstickman@gmail.com>"
copyright = "2015-2016, Michael Aaron Murphy <mmstickman@gmail.com>"
license-file = ["LICENSE", "3"]
depends = "$auto"
extended-description = """\
Written safely in Rust, this systemd manager provides a simple GTK3 GUI interface \
that allows you to enable/disable/start/stop services, monitor service logs, and \
edit unit files without ever using the terminal."""
section = "admin"
priority = "optional"
assets = [
    ["assets/org.freedesktop.policykit.systemd-manager.policy", "usr/share/polkit-1/actions/", "644"],
    ["assets/systemd-manager.desktop", "usr/share/applications/", "644"],
    ["assets/systemd-manager-pkexec", "usr/bin/", "755"],
    ["target/release/systemd-manager", "usr/bin/", "755"]
]