(debian-policy.info)dpkg-gencontrol - generates binary package control files

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15.1.3 ‘dpkg-gencontrol’ - generates binary package control files
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This program is usually called from ‘debian/rules’ (see Note:
section_title.) in the top level of the source tree.

This is usually done just before the files and directories in the
temporary directory tree where the package is being built have their
permissions and ownerships set and the package is constructed using
‘dpkg-deb/’.  (1)

‘dpkg-gencontrol’ must be called after all the files which are to go
into the package have been placed in the temporary build directory, so
that its calculation of the installed size of a package is correct.

It is also necessary for ‘dpkg-gencontrol’ to be run after
‘dpkg-shlibdeps’ so that the variable substitutions created by
‘dpkg-shlibdeps’ in ‘debian/substvars’ are available.

For a package which generates only one binary package, and which builds
it in ‘debian/tmp’ relative to the top of the source package, it is
usually sufficient to call ‘dpkg-gencontrol’.

Sources which build several binaries will typically need something like:

     dpkg-gencontrol -Pdebian/pkg -ppackage

The ‘-P’ tells ‘dpkg-gencontrol’ that the package is being built in a
non-default directory, and the ‘-p’ tells it which package’s control
file should be generated.

‘dpkg-gencontrol’ also adds information to the list of files in
‘debian/files’, for the benefit of (for example) a future invocation of
‘dpkg-genchanges’.

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   (1) This is so that the control file which is produced has the right
permissions