dh_movefiles - Man Page

dh_movefiles [debhelper options] [--sourcedir=dir] [-Xitem] [file ...]

dh_movefiles is a debhelper program that is responsible for moving files out of debian/tmp or some other directory and into other package build directories. This may be useful if your package has a Makefile that installs everything into debian/tmp, and you need to break that up into subpackages.

Note: dh_install is a much better program, and you are recommended to use it instead of dh_movefiles.

debian/package.files

Lists the files to be moved into a package, separated by whitespace. The filenames listed should be relative to debian/tmp/. You can also list directory names, and the whole directory will be moved.

--sourcedir=dir

Instead of moving files out of debian/tmp (the default), this option makes it move files out of some other directory. Since the entire contents of the sourcedir is moved, specifying something like --sourcedir=/ is very unsafe, so to prevent mistakes, the sourcedir must be a relative filename; it cannot begin with a `/'.

-Xitem,  --exclude=item

Exclude files that contain item anywhere in their filename from being installed.

file ...

Lists files to move. The filenames listed should be relative to debian/tmp/. You can also list directory names, and the whole directory will be moved. It is an error to list files here unless you use -p, -i, or -a to tell dh_movefiles which subpackage to put them in.

Note that files are always moved out of debian/tmp by default (even if you have instructed debhelper to use a compatibility level higher than one, which does not otherwise use debian/tmp for anything at all). The idea behind this is that the package that is being built can be told to install into debian/tmp, and then files can be moved by dh_movefiles from that directory. Any files or directories that remain are ignored, and get deleted by dh_clean later.

debhelper(7)

This program is a part of debhelper.

Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

debhelper(7).