Can anyone experienced with debian package development, point me to some valid, recent and Best Practice™ guides or blog posts explaining how to package stuff for Debian?
The policy manual serves as both ruleset but also explains lots of things w.r.t. packaging, as that's part of the ruleset: https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/index.html#
For actually uploading new packages to the archive you need to be "DD" (Debian Developer), which is a bit more involved process to go through. "DM"s (Debian Maintainer) is easier and can do already lots of things. It's also possible to start out by finding an existing DD that sponsors your upload, i.e. checks your final packaging work and if it looks alright will upload it in your name to the repositories.
You might also check out the wiki of Debian, it's sometimes a bit dated and got lots of info packed in, but can still be valuable if you're willing to work through the outdated bits. E.g.: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq
But yes, RPM itself is better than Deb if only because there's a single .spec file rather than a sea of embedded nonsense. It's still not as nice as many "port" packaging systems (e.g. the BSDs, but also Gentoo), but most of those cheat by not having to deal with arbitrary binary packages. Still, binary packages are hardly an excuse for the ludicrous contortions the standard deb-building tools choose to require.
Sounds like OpenSUSE to me. I tend to favor the fast-updating versions, but I'm pretty sure openSUSE Leap is exactly what you're asking for.
I don't think there are many alternatives. OpenSUSE isn't supported for very long, and there really isn't anything else if you want btrfs, no Debian or its derivatives, and fire & forget kind of distribution.
Edit: Also look at Alpine Linux, if supports btrfs and has one of the best package formats that is an absolute joy to write (way easier than rpm or deb).
It's pretty different in some areas (no systemd and musl being two examples), check if that's fine for you.
"RHEL" is supported for 10, and if Oracle screws us over (I can believe in that possibility), ELevate lets you migrate sideways to any supported alternative.
It really depends on the use case.
For example, 15.6 was still stuck on GCC 7. Guess when 15.0 was released. Also, stuck on Python 3.6, which was released around the same time.
alpine feels a bit to opinionated for my taste. i just found this though: https://mrgecko.org/blog/2024/add-btrfs-support-to-rocky-and... centos has a SIG that provides kernels with btrfs which can be used with alma and rocky. that sounds promising.
Best Packaging Practices https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/best...
There's two tutorials/walkthroughs linked from there:
- how to build an existing Debian package: https://wiki.debian.org/BuildingTutorial
- how to package new software for Debian: https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debmake-doc/ch05.en.html