Ubuntu: how to make apt-get/synaptic work for own application

Question

We are developing a (closed-source) Java application and think about possibilities to update the software automatically on the user's machines. Fortunately, for nearly all Linux systems there exist package managers. We don't think it would be useful to add our application to the common repositories for several reasons, but how to create an own one, manage it and tell the user's machines to poll and update from that?

Answer 1

For packaging a application see the Debian Maintainers Guide. To distribute the packages you need to set up your own package-repository this can be done using the dpkg-scanpackages or the reprepro tool. A short introduction to this can be found in this blog post. To simplify adding a new build package to the repo, have a look at the dupload tool.

Answer 2

1. Host a repository on a web-server locally.
2. Package your software as theomega stated.
3. Add your software to repository.

Answer 3

There's a Java/Packaging page on the Debian wiki.