We package the agent for both Debian and RHEL based Linux distributions. Since all of the agent dependencies are bundled with it, it means there is really no traditional compilation phase when making the packages -- it is largely just a matter of getting the bundle into the right folder and making sure init scripts get installed properly.
Sometimes it is useful to be able to revision a package even when there are no
agent bundle changes (for example, to change an init script or the default
config file). You can do this by first making a branch off of the latest
release that you want to revision. You should not make a new package revision
that includes inter-version agent changes, so package revisions must be a
single commit away from either a version tag or another package revision
commit. Then make the desired changes to the package in a single commit and
tag it with a new annotated tag of the form v<agent version>-(deb|rpm)[2-9],
where <agent version> is the agent version the revision is for, (deb|rpm)
is either the string deb or rpm depending on which package you are
updating, and [2-9] is the revision number, starting at 2 (revision 1 is
already implicitly used for the agent version release). For example, if agent
2.1.0 is the latest version and you update the Debian package and want to
release it before a newer agent is released, you commit the changes and then
make an annotated tag v2.1.0-deb2, which will generate a new Debian
package with version 2.1.0-2 that will supercede package version 2.1.0-1
that would have been released when the agent version was incremented.