I create .deb packages of each module and they're hosted on a web server with a Packages.gz file (which is generated using some command). I did it by hand (found a tutorial online) until I found dh-make-perl as i5513 mentioned. It works pretty well.

For the "dependencies" deb file (the one that lists all the packages required for our servers, both from the official repo mirror and our package list) I created it by hand. Essentially you just have to create a debian CONTROL file and then run some dpkg commands on it. I can post more details when I get to work and take a look. It's one of those things that works and we only touch when we need a new module.

Update: Okay here are some instructions...

  $ export DEBFULLNAME="<your_name>"
  $ export DEBEMAIL="<your_email>"
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1. Go to search.cpan.org, search for the package, click the one you want, and right-click the Download link and click Copy Link Location. For this example I'm going to use http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/K/KI/KILINRAX/HTML-Strip-1.06.tar.gz
2. Make a directory for your package.

     $ mkdir HTML-Strip
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3. Change to that directory

     $ cd HTML-Strip
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4. Download the package

     $ wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/K/KI/KILINRAX/HTML-Str
   +ip-1.06.tar.gz
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5. Unzip the package

     $ tar xvfz HTML-Strip-1.06.tar.gz
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6. Configure/build the package

     $ dh-make-perl -p my-libhtml-strip-perl --build HTML-Strip-1.06
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7. Now your project directory should have the following:

   drwxr-xr-x 4  4096 2010-04-13 20:34 HTML-Strip-1.06
   -rw-r--r-- 1  7764 2006-02-10 11:27 HTML-Strip-1.06.tar.gz
   -rw-r--r-- 1 17912 2010-04-13 20:35 my-libhtml-strip-perl_1.06-1_i386.
   +deb
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8. Check to make sure you can install the package

     $ sudo dpkg -i my-libhtml-strip-perl_1.06-1_i386.deb
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9. Make sure you can "use" the module

     $ perl -mHTML::Strip -e 1
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Once you have the .deb package you need to host it on a web server somewhere and you need to generate a Packages.gz so apt/etc. knows about each package.

Assuming you put all your .deb files in a folder called binary/ you run:

dpkg-scanpackages binary /dev/null | gzip -9c > Packages.gz
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Now you have a folder called binary/ with a bunch of .deb files in and a Packages.gz with a list of those files. You can edit our /etc/apt/sources.list to add your repo like this:

deb http://<your_url>/ /
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