I've just made a debian package, when all the files are zipped together the size is 60 MB, however my .deb file made from the same directory is ~150 MB. Have I done something wrong or are there lots of overheads involved with .deb files, and if so would it be possible to get a brief run-down of what is added to the raw files?
Debian package very large compared to zip file
debian;dpkg
A .deb file is an ar archive with typically those files:$ ar tv apache2_2.4.6-2_amd64.debrw-r--r-- 0/0      4 Jul 23 12:51 2013 debian-binaryrw-r--r-- 0/0   7422 Jul 23 12:51 2013 control.tar.gzrw-r--r-- 0/0 179960 Jul 23 12:51 2013 data.tar.xz(the used compression can be gz, bz2 or xz).The ar archive is not compressed itself, only the components are.Only data.tar.xxx should be significantly large as it contains the actual files that make up the package.You can check the content with:$ ar p apache2_2.4.6-2_amd64.deb data.tar.xz | tar --xz -tvf - | headdrwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2013-07-23 12:50 ./drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2013-07-23 12:47 ./var/drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2013-07-23 12:47 ./var/cache/drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2013-07-23 12:47 ./var/cache/apache2/drwxr-xr-x www-data/www-data 0 2013-07-23 12:47 ./var/cache/apache2/mod_cache_disk/drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2013-07-23 12:47 ./var/www/[...]