This is the meta-package for Regolith Linux that bundles all custom packages into a common root. The package is just a container, and contains no files or logic itself.
This guide assumes you wish to make changes to a Regolith package and host those changes in a new version. It also assumes you'll be building from an Ubuntu-based system like Regolith and you already have setup the Debian package tools. See this concise guide to install the tools and get a familiar with the workflow.
This step will pull the Regolith package metadata down from GitHub. The debian metadata is on a branch called debian, due to conflicts that this README presents to the build tool.
mkdir workspace
git clone -b debian https://github.com/regolith-linux/regolith-desktop
Now we will build the package locally and generate the Debian package metadata required for hosting in a Private Package Archive (PPA).
cd regolith-desktop
debuild -S -sa
There should now be a number of files generated in the parent directory, such as regolith-desktop_2.07-1ubuntu1_source.changes.
It's necessary to update the version of the package so that the local package manager will be able to determine that an update is available. The Debian packaging tools provide the program dch for this task. dch modifies the debian/changelog file. This file contains the package versioning metadata and is organized by stanzas of three elements: version, change info, and author of change. It's similiar in a way to a git commit log + release tags, but managed in a file rather than the git index. Run dch and update the version string, change UNRELEASED to your intended Ubuntu version target (probably bionic) and then below add a description of your change. The rest should be done automatically by the dch program. Verify that your change follows the pattern of entries below it.
You may wish to change the package version in the debian\changelog file to avoid conflicts, but that is optional and up to you.
dput ppa://<username>/<ppa name> ../regolith-desktop_2.07-1ubuntu1_source.changes
After uploading the package to your PPA, you should get an email from Launchpad.net regarding if the package was accepted or rejected. Then, some time later the package should have been build and available for installation. Assuming you have already added your PPA via add-apt-repository, sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade should cause the new package to be installed on your local system.