Debian Policy Manual

Abstract

This manual describes the policy requirements for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. This includes the structure and contents of the Debian archive and several design issues of the operating system, as well as technical requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in the distribution. The policy package itself is maintained by a group of maintainers that have no editorial powers. The current list of maintainers is:

1. Julian Gilbey jdg@debian.org

2. Manoj Srivastava srivasta@debian.org

Copyright Notice

Copyright ©1996,1997,1998 Ian Jackson and Christian Schwarz.

This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution or on the World Wide Web at The GNU General Public Licence. You can also obtain it by writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Contents

• 1 About this manual
• 1.1 Scope
• 1.2 New versions of this document
• 1.3 Feedback
• 2 The Debian Archive
• 2.1 Package copyright and sections
• 2.2 Priorities
• 2.3 Binary packages
• 2.4 Source packages
• 3 Control files and their fields
• 3.1 Syntax of control files
• 3.2 List of fields
• 4 Version numbering
• 4.1 Version numbers based on dates
• 5 Packaging Considerations
• 5.1 Time Stamps
• 5.2 debian/rules - the main building script
• 5.3 debian/changelog
• 5.4 debian/substvars and variable substitutions
• 5.5 debian/files
• 5.6 Restrictions on objects in source packages
• 5.7 Descriptions of packages - the Description field
• 6 Package maintainer scripts and installation procedure
• 6.1 Introduction to package maintainer scripts
• 6.2 Maintainer scripts Idempotency
• 6.3 Controlling terminal for maintainer scripts
• 6.4 Summary of ways maintainer scripts are called
• 6.5 Details of unpack phase of installation or upgrade
• 6.6 Details of configuration
• 6.7 Details of removal and/or configuration purging
• 7 Declaring relationships between packages
• 7.1 Syntax of relationship fields
• 7.2 Binary Dependencies - Depends, Recommends, Suggests, Enhances, Pre-Depends
• 7.3 Conflicting binary packages - Conflicts
• 7.4 Virtual packages - Provides
• 7.5 Overwriting files and replacing packages - Replaces
• 7.6 Relationships between source and binary packages - Build-Depends, Build-Depends-Indep, Build-Conflicts, Build-Conflicts-Indep
• 8 Configuration file handling
• 9 Shared libraries
• 9.1 Handling shared library dependencies - the shlibs system
• 9.2 The shlibs files present on the system
• 9.3 How to use dpkg-shlibdeps and the shlibs files
• 9.4 The shlibs File Format
• 9.5 Providing a shlibs file
• 9.6 Writing the debian/shlibs.local file
• 10 The Operating System
• 10.1 Filesystem hierarchy
• 10.2 Users and groups
• 10.3 System run levels and init.d scripts
• 10.4 Console messages from init.d scripts
• 10.5 Cron jobs
• 10.6 Menus
• 10.7 Multimedia handlers
• 10.8 Keyboard configuration
• 10.9 Environment variables
• 11 Files
• 11.1 Binaries
• 11.2 Libraries
• 11.3 Shared libraries
• 11.4 Scripts
• 11.5 Symbolic links
• 11.6 Device files
• 11.7 Configuration files
• 11.8 Log files
• 11.9 Permissions and owners
• 12 Customized programs
• 12.1 Architecture specification strings
• 12.2 Daemons
• 12.3 Using pseudo-ttys and modifying wtmp, utmp and lastlog
• 12.4 Editors and pagers
• 12.5 Web servers and applications
• 12.6 Mail transport, delivery and user agents
• 12.7 News system configuration
• 12.8 Programs for the X Window System
• 12.9 Perl programs and modules
• 12.10 Emacs lisp programs
• 12.11 Games
• 13 Documentation
• 13.1 Manual pages
• 13.2 Info documents
• 13.3 Additional documentation
• 13.4 Accessing the documentation
• 13.5 Preferred documentation formats
• 13.6 Copyright information
• 13.7 Examples
• 13.8 Changelog files
• A Introduction and scope of these appendices
• B Binary packages (from old Packaging Manual)
• B.1 Creating package files - dpkg-deb
• B.2 Package control information files
• B.3 The main control information file: control
• B.4 Time Stamps
• C Source packages (from old Packaging Manual)
• C.1 Tools for processing source packages
• C.2 The Debianised source tree
• C.3 Source packages as archives
• C.4 Unpacking a Debian source package without dpkg-source
• D Control files and their fields (from old Packaging Manual)
• D.1 Syntax of control files
• D.2 List of fields
• E Configuration file handling (from old Packaging Manual)
• E.1 Automatic handling of configuration files by dpkg
• E.2 Fully-featured maintainer script configuration handling
• F Alternative versions of an interface - update-alternatives (from old Packaging Manual)
• G Diversions - overriding a package's version of a file (from old Packaging Manual)

Debian Policy Manual