1 Debhelper v3 is a major new revision of debhelper. Currently, v3 is still
2 being worked on, and will change in drastic ways without notice. This
3 *will* break packages that use it, so don't, unless you like riding the
6 To enable debhelper v3 features (do this with *caution*), set DH_COMPAT=3 in
7 your debian/rules. Also, it is a very good idea to add a call to your
8 debian/rules like this:
10 To ensure that your package won't be built with some old version of
11 debhelper that ignores the DH_COMPAT flag.
13 Here are the changes I'm planning to make to debhelper for v3, based on
14 prior discussion on debian-devel.
16 Items marked with a + are done. All others will happen as soon as I can code
19 * dh_installmanpages will be made into a non-DWIM program, so you'll have to
20 specify all man pages to install and possibly where to put them. This may
22 dh_installmanpages -x xterm.1 xfoo.1 xbar.man
23 dh_installmanpages --section=8 su.man
24 Ok, there's a _little_ DWIM left in there, it'll be smart enough to munge
25 the .man filenames properly. It'll probably just assume all man pages have
26 an extension, and delete that extentation, and add the correct one.
28 * dh_movefiles will use a name other than debian/<package>.files for the
29 list of what to move, because it can't use debian/files for the first
30 package, since that file is already used elsewhere. It'll use
33 * dh_movefiles should delete empty directories after it's moved all files
36 * debian/README will be installed as /usr/share/doc/<package>/README in
37 native packages, and as README.Debian in non-native packages. This is
38 consistent with the handing of debian/TODO and debian/changelog. (#34628)
40 * There will be no change to the names of debhelper config files used, I've
41 decided against debian/<package>/* and the like, because although those
42 subdirs do work, they're not allowed by the packaging manual, and they'd
43 make source unpacking by hand a lot harder. I will leave these files
44 completly as they are now. However, I will remove most of the language
45 documenting that debian/<foo> works, and will deprecate that usage.
46 debian/<package>.<foo> will be preferred even in single binary packages.
48 * Every file in etc/ will be automatically be flagged as a conffile.
50 * Debhelper config files will support globbing via * and ?, when
51 appropriate. To turn this off and use those changarcters raw, just quote
54 * dh_makeshlibs will generate autoscript fragments for ldconfig. This will
55 require you call it before dh_installdeb, which isn't always done now.