Marek Michalkiewicz writes ("Bug#2091: creating packages requires root privileges"): > To create a binary *.deb package, root privileges are required. This > is because you must create a complete directory structure with proper > ownerships and permissions first, and then use dpkg-deb to create > a package from it.
Unfortunately there's not much that can be done about this, because most packages are created by running the package's own Makefile to install the files. This doesn't work (or fails to DTRT) if you're not root. I have no plans to improve this situatioon; I think the simplest solution would be a way to mount a part of a filesystem in a way that means "user <uid> is root for here". You'd want to mount it with nosuid,nodev of course. Then the filesystem could be used to record the chmod's &c done by the package build Makefiles and get them into the .deb file. If someone else wants to write a program that makes .deb files some other way then they should feel free. They'll probably want to make the `new format' archives the default - see the dpkg-deb source for details. I'm closing this bug report. Ian.