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[debian/debian-policy.git] / policy.sgml

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<debiandoc>
  <!--
  Debian GNU/Linux Policy Manual.
  Copyright (C)1996,1997,1998 Ian Jackson and Christian Schwarz;
  released under the terms of the GNU
  General Public License, version 2 or (at your option) any later.
  Initial version 1996, Ian Jackson, ijackson@gnu.ai.mit.edu
  Revised November 27, 1996, David A. Morris, bweaver@debian.org 
  New sections March 15, 1997, Christian Schwarz, schwarz@debian.org
  Reworked/Restructured April-July 1997, Christian Schwarz, schwarz@debian.org
  Maintainer since 1997, Christian Schwarz, schwarz@debian.org
  Christoph Lameter contributed the "Web Standard"
  The debian-policy mailing list has taken responsibility for the
  contents of this document since September 1998, with the package
  maintainers responsible for packagingn adminstrivia only.
  -->
  
  <book>
    <titlepag>
      <title>Debian Policy Manual</title>
      <author>
        <name>Ian Jackson </name>
        <email>ijackson@gnu.ai.mit.edu</email>
      </author>
      <author>
        <name>Christian Schwarz</name> 
        <email>schwarz@debian.org</email>
      </author>
      <author>
        <name>revised: David A. Morris</name> 
        <email>bweaver@debian.org</email>
      </author>
      <author>
        <name>The Debian Policy mailing List</name>
        <email>debian-policy@lists.debian.org</email>
      </author>
      <version>version &version;, &date;</version>

      <abstract>
        This manual describes the policy requirements for the Debian
        GNU/Linux distribution. This includes the structure and
        contents of the Debian archive, 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. At the moment, the list of
        maintainers is:
        <enumlist>
          <item>
            <p>Michael Alan Dorman <email>mdorman@debian.org</email></p>
          </item>
          <item>
            <p>Richard Braakman <email>dark@xs4all.nl</email></p>
          </item>
          <item>
            <p>Philip Hands <email>phil@hands.com</email></p>
          </item>
          <item>
            <p>Manoj Srivastava <email>srivasta@debian.org</email></p>
          </item>
        </enumlist>
      </abstract>


      <copyright>
        <copyrightsummary>
          Copyright &copy;1996,1997,1998 Ian Jackson
          and Christian Schwarz.
        </copyrightsummary>
        <p>
          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.
        </p>

        <p>
          This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
          <em>without any warranty</em>; without even the implied
          warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular
          purpose.  See the GNU General Public License for more
          details.
          </p>
        <p>
          A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as
          <tt>/usr/share/common-licences/GPL</tt> in the Debian GNU/Linux
          distribution or on the World Wide Web at 
          <url id="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html"
          name="&urlname">. You can also obtain it by writing to the
          Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
          Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
        </p>
      </copyright>
    </titlepag>

    <toc detail="sect">
    
    <chapt id="scope">
      <heading>About this manual</heading>
      <sect>
        <heading>Scope</heading>
        <p>
          This manual describes the policy requirements for the Debian
          GNU/Linux distribution. This includes the structure and
          contents of the Debian archive, several design issues of the
          operating system, as well as technical requirements that
          each package must satisfy to be included in the
          distribution.
          </p>
        <p>
          This manual does <em>not</em> describe the technical
          mechanisms involved in package creation, installation, and
          removal.  This information can be found in the <em>Debian
          Packaging Manual</em> and the <em>Debian System
            Administrators' Manual</em>.
          </p>
        <p>
          This document assumes familiarity with these other two
          manuals.  Unfortunately, the <em>System Administrators'
          Manual</em> does not exist yet.
        </p>
        <p>
          Much of the information presented in this manual will be
          useful even when building a package which is to be
          distributed in some other way or is for local use.
        </p>
      </sect>
      <sect>
        <heading>New versions of this document</heading>
        <p>
          The current version of this document is always accessible from the
          Debian FTP server at
          <url
          id="ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/doc/manuals/debian-policy.html.tar.gz" name="&urlname">
          or from the Debian WWW server at
          <url id="http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-policy/"
          name="&urlname"></p>

        <p>
          In addition, this manual is distributed via the Debian package
          <tt>debian-policy</tt>
        </p>
      </sect>
      <sect>
        <heading>Feedback</heading>

        <p>
          As the Debian GNU/Linux system is continuously evolving this
          manual is changed from time to time.
        </p>
        <p>
          While the authors of this document tried hard not to include
          any typos or other errors these still occur. If you discover
          an error in this manual or if you want to tell us any
          comments, suggestions, or critics please send an email to
          the Debian Policy List,
          <email>debian-policy@lists.debian.org</email>, or submit a
          bug report against the <tt>debian-policy</tt> package.
        </p>
      </sect>
    </chapt>
    <chapt>
      <heading>The Debian Archive</heading>
      <p>
        The Debian GNU/Linux system is maintained and distributed as a
        collection of <em>packages</em>. Since there are so many of them (over
        2600) they are split into <em>sections</em> and <em>priorities</em> to
        simplify handling of them.
      </p>
      <p>
        The effort of the Debian project is to build a free operating
        system, but not every package we want to make accessible is
        <em>free</em> in our sense (see Debian Free Software
        Guidelines, below), or may be imported/exported without
        restrictions. Thus, the archive is split into the sections
        <em>main</em>, <em>non-us</em>, <em>non-free</em>, and
        <em>contrib</em>.</p>
      <p>
        The <em>main</em> section forms the <em>Debian GNU/Linux
        distribution</em>. </p>
      <p>
        Packages in the other sections are not considered as part of
        the Debian distribution, though we support their use, and we
        provide infrastructure for them (such as our bug-tracking
        system and mailing lists). This Debian Policy Manual applies
        to these packages as well.</p>

      <sect id="pkgcopyright">
        <heading>Package copyright and sections</heading>
        <p>
          The aims of this policy are:

          <list compact="compact">
            <item>
              <p>We want to make as much software available as we
                can.</p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>We want to encourage everyone to write free software.</p>
            </item>
            <item>
                <p> We want to make it easy for people to produce
                CD-ROMs of our system without violating any licenses,
                import/export restrictions, or any other laws.</p>
            </item>
          </list>
        </p>
      <sect1>
        <heading>The Debian Free Software Guidelines</heading>
        <p>
          The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) is our
          definition of `free' software.
          <taglist>
            <tag>Free Redistribution
            </tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                The license of a Debian component may not restrict any
                party from selling or giving away the software as a
                component of an aggregate software distribution
                containing programs from several different
                sources. The license may not require a royalty or
                other fee for such sale.
              </p>
            </item>
            <tag>Source Code
            </tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                The program must include source code, and must allow
                distribution in source code as well as compiled form.
              </p>
            </item>
            <tag>Derived Works
            </tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                The license must allow modifications and derived
                works, and must allow them to be distributed under the
                same terms as the license of the original software.
              </p>
            </item>
            <tag>Integrity of The Author's Source Code
            </tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                The license may restrict source-code from being
                distributed in modified form <em>only</em> if the
                license allows the distribution of ``patch files''
                with the source code for the purpose of modifying the
                program at build time. The license must explicitly
                permit distribution of software built from modified
                source code. The license may require derived works to
                carry a different name or version number from the
                original software.  (This is a compromise. The Debian
                group encourages all authors to not restrict any
                files, source or binary, from being modified.)
              </p>
            </item>
            <tag>No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
            </tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                The license must not discriminate against any person
                or group of persons.
              </p>
            </item>
            <tag>No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
            </tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                The license must not restrict anyone from making use
                of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For
                example, it may not restrict the program from being
                used in a business, or from being used for genetic
                research.
              </p>
            </item>
            <tag>Distribution of License
            </tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                The rights attached to the program must apply to all
                to whom the program is redistributed without the need
                for execution of an additional license by those
                parties.
              </p>
            </item>
            <tag>License Must Not Be Specific to Debian
            </tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                The rights attached to the program must not depend on
                the program's being part of a Debian system. If the
                program is extracted from Debian and used or
                distributed without Debian but otherwise within the
                terms of the program's license, all parties to whom
                the program is redistributed must have the same
                rights as those that are granted in conjunction with
                the Debian system.
              </p>
            </item>
            <tag>License Must Not Contaminate Other Software
            </tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                The license must not place restrictions on other
                software that is distributed along with the licensed
                software. For example, the license must not insist
                that all other programs distributed on the same medium
                must be free software.
              </p>
            </item>
            <tag>Example Licenses
            </tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                The ``GPL,'' ``BSD,'' and ``Artistic'' licenses are
                examples of licenses that we consider <em>free</em>.
              </p>
            </item>
          </taglist>
        </p>
      </sect1>
      <sect1>
        <heading>The main section</heading>
        <p>
          Every package in "main" must comply with the DFSG (Debian
          Free Software Guidelines).</p>

        <p>
          In addition, the packages in "main"
          <list compact="compact">
            <item>
              <p>
                must not require a package outside of "main" for
                compilation or execution (thus, the package may not
                declare a "Depends" or "Recommends" relationship on a
                non-main package),
              </p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>
                must not be so buggy that we refuse to support them,
              </p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>
                must meet all policy requirements presented in this
                manual.
              </p>
            </item>
          </list>
        </p>
      </sect1>
      <sect1>
        <heading>The contrib section</heading>
        <p>
          Every package in "contrib" must comply with the DFSG.
        </p>

        <p>
          Examples of packages which would be included in "contrib" are
          <list compact="compact">
            <item>
              <p>
                free packages which require "contrib", "non-free", or
                "non-US" packages or packages which are not in our
                archive at all for compilation or execution,
              </p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>
                wrapper packages or other sorts of free accessories for
                non-free programs,
              </p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>
                packages which we don't want to support because they are too
                buggy, and 
                </p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>
                packages which fail to meet some other policy requirements in
                a serious way.
              </p>
            </item>
          </list>
        </p>
      </sect1>
      <sect1>
        <heading>The non-free section</heading>
        <p>
          `Non-free' contains packages which are not compliant with
          the DFSG or which are encumbered by patents or other legal
          issues that make their distribution problematic.</p>
        <p>
          All packages in `non-free' must be electronically
          distributable across international borders.
        </p>
      </sect1>
      <sect1>
        <heading>The non-us server</heading>
        <p>
          Some programs with cryptographic program code must be stored
          on the "non-us" server because of export restrictions of the
          U.S.</p>
        <p>
          This applies only to packages which contain cryptographic
          code. A package containing a program with an interface to a
          cryptographic program or a program that's dynamically linked
          against a cryptographic library can be distributed if it is
          capable of running without the cryptography library or
          program.
        </p>
      </sect1>
      <sect1>
        <heading>Further copyright considerations</heading>
        <p>
          Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its
          copyright and distribution license in the file
          /usr/share/doc/&lt;package-name&gt;/copyright (see <ref
          id="copyrightfile"> for details).</p>
        <p>
          We reserve the right to restrict files from being included
          anywhere in our archives if
          <list compact="compact">
            <item>
              <p>
                their use or distribution would break a law,
              </p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>
                there is an ethical conflict in their distribution or
                use,
              </p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>
                we would have to sign a license for them, or
              </p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>
                their distribution would conflict with other project
                policies.
              </p>
            </item>
          </list>
        </p>

        <p>
          Programs whose authors encourage the user to make donations
          are fine for the main distribution, provided that the
          authors do not claim that not donating is immoral,
          unethical, illegal or something similar; otherwise they must
          go in contrib (or non-free, if even distribution is
          restricted by such statements).</p>

        <p>
          Packages whose copyright permission notices (or patent
          problems) do not allow redistribution even of only binaries,
          and where no special permission has been obtained, cannot be
          placed on the Debian FTP site and its mirrors at all.</p>

        <p>
          Note, that under international copyright law (this applies
          in the United States, too) <em>no</em> distribution or
          modification of a work is allowed without an explicit notice
          saying so.  Therefore a program without a copyright notice
          <em>is</em> copyrighted and you may not do anything to it
          without risking being sued! Likewise if a program has a
          copyright notice but no statement saying what is permitted
          then nothing is permitted.</p>

        <p>
          Many authors are unaware of the problems that restrictive
          copyrights (or lack of copyright notices) can cause for the
          users of their supposedly-free software.  It is often
          worthwhile contacting such authors diplomatically to ask
          them to modify their license terms. However, this is a
          politically difficult thing to do and you should ask for
          advice on <tt>debian-devel</tt> first.</p>

        <p>
          When in doubt, send mail to
          <email>debian-devel@lists.debian.org</email>.  Be prepared
          to provide us with the copyright statement.  Software
          covered by the GPL, public domain software and BSD-like
          copyrights are safe; be wary of the phrases `commercial use
          prohibited' and `distribution restricted'.</p>
      </sect1>
      <sect1>
        <heading>Subsections</heading>

        <p>
          The packages in the <em>main</em>, <em>contrib</em>, and
          <em>non-free</em> sections are grouped further into
          <em>subsections</em> to simplify handling of them.</p>

        <p>
          The section for each package is specified in the package's
          <em>control record</em>. However, the maintainer of the
          Debian archive may override this selection to assure the
          consistency of the Debian distribution. </p>

        <p>
          Please check the current Debian distribution to see which
          sections are available.</p>
      </sect1>
      <sect>
        <heading>Priorities</heading>
          
        <p>
          Each package is given a certain <em>priority</em> value,
          which is included in the package's <em>control
          record</em>. This information is used in the Debian package
          management tool to separate high-priority packages from
          less-important packages.</p>
          
        <p>
          The following <em>priority levels</em> are supported by the
          Debian package management system, <prgn>dpkg</prgn>.
          <taglist>
            <tag><tt>required</tt></tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                <tt>required</tt> packages are necessary for the
                proper functioning of the system.  You must not remove
                these packages or your system may become totally
                broken and you may not even be able to use
                <prgn>dpkg</prgn> to put things back.  Systems with
                only the <tt>required</tt> packages are probably
                unusable, but they do have enough functionality to
                allow the sysadmin to boot and install more
                software.</p>
            </item>
            <tag><tt>important</tt></tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                Important programs, including those which one would
                expect to find on any Unix-like system.  If the
                expectation is that an experienced Unix person who
                found it missing would say `What the F*!@&lt;+ is
                going on, where is <prgn>foo</prgn>', it must be in
                <tt>important</tt>.  This is an important criterion
                because we are trying to produce, amongst other
                things, a free Unix.  Other packages without which the
                system will not run well or be usable must also be
               here.  This does <em>not</em> include Emacs, the X
               Window System, TeX or any other large applications.
               The <tt>important</tt> packages are just a bare
               minimum of commonly-expected and necessary tools.</p>
            </item>
            <tag><tt>standard</tt></tag>
            <item>
              <p>               
                These packages provide a reasonably small but not too
                limited character-mode system.  This is what will
                install by default if the user doesn't select anything
                else.  It doesn't include many large applications, but
                it does include Emacs (this is more of a piece of
                infrastructure than an application) and a reasonable
                subset of TeX and LaTeX (if this is possible without
                X).</p>
            </item>
            <tag><tt>optional</tt></tag>
            <item>
              <p>               
                (In a sense everything is optional that isn't
                required, but that's not what is meant here.) This is
                all the software that you might reasonably want to
                install if you didn't know what it was or don't have
                specialised requirements. This is a much larger system
                and includes the X Window System, a full TeX
                distribution, and lots of applications.</p>
            </item>
            <tag><tt>extra</tt></tag>
            <item>
              <p>               
                This contains packages that conflict with others with
                higher priorities, or are only likely to be useful if
                you already know what they are or have specialised
                requirements.
              </p>
            </item>
          </taglist></p>
          
        <p>
          Packages may not depend on packages with lower priority
          values.  If this does happen, one of the priority values
          will have to be adapted.
        </p>
      </sect>
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Binary packages</heading>
          
        <p>
          The Debian GNU/Linux distribution is based on the Debian
          package management system, called <prgn>dpkg</prgn>. Thus,
          all packages in the Debian distribution have to be provided
          in the <tt>.deb</tt> file format.</p>
          
        
        <sect1>
          <heading>The package name</heading>
            
          <p>
            Every package must have a name that's unique within the Debian
            archive.</p>
            
          <p>
            Package names may only consist of lower case letters, digits (0-9),
            plus (+) or minus (-) signs, and periods (.).</p>
            
          <p>
            The package name is part of the file name of the
            <tt>.deb</tt> file and is included in the control field
            information.
          </p>
        </sect1>
                
        <sect1>
          <heading>The maintainer of a package</heading>
            
          <p>
            Every package must have exactly one maintainer at a
            time. This person is responsible that the license of the
            package's software complies with the policy of the
            distribution this package is included in.</p>
            
          <p>
            The maintainer must be specified in the
            <tt>Maintainer</tt> control field with the correct name
            and a working email address for the Debian maintainer of
            the package.  If one person maintains several packages
            he/she should try to avoid having different forms of their
            name and email address in different <tt>Maintainer</tt>
            fields.</p>
            
          <p>
            If the maintainer of a package quits from the Debian
            project the Debian QA Group takes over the maintainership
            of the package until someone else volunteers for that
            task. These packages are called <em>orphaned
            packages</em>.
          </p>
        </sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>The description of a package</heading>
            
          <p>
            Every Debian package must have an extended description
            stored in the appropriate field of the control record.</p>
            
          <p>
            The description must be written so that it tells the user
            what they need to know to decide whether to install the
            package. This description should not just be copied from
            the blurb for the program.  Instructions for configuring
            or using the package must not be included -- that is what
            installation scripts, manual pages, Info files, etc. are
            for.  Copyright statements and other administrivia must
            not be included -- that is what the copyright file is
            for.</p>
        </sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Dependencies</heading>
            
          <p>
            Every package has to specify the dependency information
            about other packages, that are required for the first to
            work correctly.</p>
            
          <p>
            For example, for any shared libraries required by
            dynamically-linked executable binary in a package a
            dependency entry has to be provided.</p>
            
          <p>
            It is not necessary for other packages to declare any
            dependencies they have on other packages which are marked
            <tt>Essential</tt> (see below).</p>
            
          <p>
            Sometimes, a package requires another package to be
            installed <em>and</em> configured before it can be
            installed. In this case, you'll have to specify a
            <tt>Pre-Depends</tt> entry for the package.</p>
            
          <p>
            You must not specify a <tt>Pre-Depends</tt> entry for a
            package before this has been discussed on the
            <tt>debian-devel</tt> mailing list and a consensus about
            doing that has been reached.</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Virtual packages</heading>
            
          <p>
            Sometimes, there are several packages doing more-or-less
            the same job. In this case, it's useful to define a
            <em>virtual package</em> who's name describes the function
            the packages have. (The virtual packages just exist
            logically, not physically--that's why they are called
            <em>virtual</em>.) The packages with this particular
            function will then <em>provide</em> the virtual
            package. Thus, any other package requiring that function
            can simply depend on the virtual package without having to
            specify all possible packages individually.</p>
            
          <p>
            All packages must use virtual package names where
            appropriate, and arrange to create new ones if necessary.
            They must not use virtual package names (except privately,
            amongst a cooperating group of packages) unless they have
            been agreed upon and appear in the list of virtual package
            names.</p>
            
          <p>
            The latest version of the authoritative list of virtual
            package names can be found on
            <ftpsite>ftp.debian.org</ftpsite> in
            <ftppath>/debian/doc/package-developer/virtual-package-names-list.text</ftppath>
            or your local mirror. In addition, it is included in the
            <tt>debian-policy</tt> package. The procedure for updating
            the list is described at the top of the file.</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Base packages</heading>
            
          <p>
            The packages included in the <tt>base</tt> section have a
            special function. They form a minimum subset of the Debian
            GNU/Linux system that is installed before everything else
            on a new system. Thus, only very few packages are allowed
            to go into the <tt>base</tt> section to keep the required
            disk usage very small.</p>
            
          <p>
            Most of these packages should have the priority value
            <tt>required</tt> or at least <tt>important</tt>, and many
            of them will be tagged <tt>essential</tt> (see below).</p>
            
          <p>
            You must not place any packages into the <tt>base</tt>
            section before this has been discussed on the
            <tt>debian-devel</tt> mailing list and a consensus about
            doing that has been reached.</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Essential packages</heading>
            
          <p>
            Some packages are tagged <tt>essential</tt>. (They have
            <tt>Essential: yes</tt> in their package control record.)
            This flag is used for packages that are <em>essential</em>
            for a system.</p>
            
          <p>
            Since these packages can not easily be removed (you'll
            have to specify an extra <em>force option</em> to
            <prgn>dpkg</prgn>) this flag must only be used where
            absolutely necessary.
            
            A shared library package must not be tagged
            <em>essential</em>--the dependencies will prevent its
            premature removal, and we need to be able to remove it
            when it has been superseded.</p>
            
          <p>
            You must not tag any packages <tt>essential</tt> before
            this has been discussed on the <tt>debian-devel</tt>
            mailing and a consensus about doing that has been
            reached.</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Maintainer scripts</heading>
            
          <p>
            The package installation scripts must avoid producing
            output which it is unnecessary for the user to see and
            should rely on <prgn>dpkg</prgn> to stave off boredom on
            the part of a user installing many packages.  This means,
            amongst other things, using the <tt>--quiet</tt> option on
            <prgn>install-info</prgn>.</p>
            
          <p>
            Packages should try to minimise the amount of prompting
            they need to do, and they should ensure that the user will
            only ever be asked each question once.  This means that
            packages should try to use appropriate shared
            configuration files (such as <tt>/etc/papersize</tt> and
            <tt>/etc/news/server</tt>), rather than each prompting for
            their own list of required pieces of information.</p>
            
          <p>
            It also means that an upgrade should not ask the same
            questions again, unless the user has used <tt>dpkg
            --purge</tt> to remove the package's configuration.  The
            answers to configuration questions should be stored in an
            appropriate place in <tt>/etc</tt> so that the user can
            modify them, and how this has been done should be
            documented.</p>
            
          <p>
            If a package has a vitally important piece of information
            to pass to the user (such as "don't run me as I am, you
            must edit the following configuration files first or you
            risk your system emitting badly-formatted messages"), it
            should display this in the <prgn>postinst</prgn> script
            and prompt the user to hit return to acknowledge the
            message.  Copyright messages do not count as vitally
            important (they belong in
            <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/copyright</tt>); neither
            do instructions on how to use a program (these should be
            in on line documentation, where all the users can see
            them).</p>
            
          <p>
            Any necessary prompting should almost always be confined
            to the post-installation script, and should be protected
            with a conditional so that unnecessary prompting doesn't
            happen if a package's installation fails and the
            <prgn>postinst</prgn> is called with
            <tt>abort-upgrade</tt>, <tt>abort-remove</tt> or
            <tt>abort-deconfigure</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            Errors which occur during the execution of an installation
            script <em>must</em> be checked and the installation
            <em>must not</em> continue after an error.</p>
            
          <p>
            Note, that <ref id="scripts">, in general applies to
            package maintainer scripts, too.</p>
            
          <p>
            Do not use <prgn>dpkg-divert</prgn> on a file belonging to
            another package without consulting the maintainer of that
            package first.</p>
            
          <p>
            In order for <prgn>update-alternatives</prgn> to work
            correctly all the packages which supply an instance of the
            `shared' command name (or, in general, filename) must use
            it.  You can use <tt>Conflicts</tt> to force the
            De-installation of other packages supplying it which do not
            (yet) use <prgn>update-alternatives</prgn>.  It may in
            this case be appropriate to specify a conflict on earlier
            versions on something--this is an exception to the usual
            rule that this is not allowed.</p>
        </sect1>
      </sect>
      <sect>
        <heading>Source packages</heading>
          
        <sect1>
          <heading>Standards conformance</heading>
            
          <p>
            You should specify the most recent version of the
            packaging standards with which your package complies in
            the source package's <tt>Standards-Version</tt> field.</p>
            
          <p>
            This value will be used to file bug reports automatically
            if your package becomes too much out of date.</p>
            
          <p>
            The value corresponds to a version of the Debian manuals,
            as can be found on the title page or page headers and
            footers (depending on the format).</p>
            
          <p>
            The version number has four components--major and minor
            number and major and minor patch level.  When the
            standards change in a way that requires every package to
            change the major number will be changed.  Significant
            changes that will require work in many packages will be
            signaled by a change to the minor number.  The major patch
            level will be changed for any change to the meaning of the
            standards, however small; the minor patch level will be
            changed when only cosmetic, typographical or other edits
            which do not change the meaning are made, or changes which
            do not affect the contents of packages.</p>

          <p>
            For package maintainers, only the first 3 digits of the
            manual version are significant in representing the
            <em>Standards-Version</em>, and either these 3 digits or
            the complete 4 digits can be specified--that's up to the
            maintainer. 
            <footnote>
              <p>
                In the past, people specified 4 digits in the
                Standards-Version field, like `2.3.0.0'.  Since any
                `patch-level changes' don't introduce new policy, it
                was thought it would be better to relax policy and
                only require that the first 3 digits are specified. (4
                digits can still be used if someone wants to do so.)
              </p>
            </footnote>
          </p>
            
          <p>
            You should regularly, and especially if your package has
            become out of date, check for the newest Policy Manual
            available and update your package, if necessary. When your
            package complies with the new standards you may update the
            <tt>Standards-Version</tt> source package field and
            release it.</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Changes to the upstream sources</heading>
            
          <p>
            If changes to the source code are made that are generally
            applicable please try to get them included in the upstream
            version of the package by supplying the upstream authors
            with the changes in whatever form they prefer.</p>
            
          <p>
            If you need to configure the package differently for
            Debian or for Linux, and the upstream source doesn't
            provide a way to configure it the way you need to, please
            add such configuration facilities (for example, a new
            <prgn>autoconf</prgn> test or <tt>#define</tt>) and send
            the patch to the upstream authors, with the default set to
            the way they originally had it.  You can then easily
            override the default in your <tt>debian/rules</tt> or
            wherever is appropriate.</p>
            
          <p>
            Please make sure that the <prgn>configure</prgn> utility
            detects the correct architecture specification string
            (refer to <ref id="arch-spec"> for details).</p>
            
          <p>
            If you need to edit a <prgn>Makefile</prgn> where
            GNU-style <prgn>configure</prgn> scripts are used, you
            should edit the <tt>.in</tt> files rather than editing the
            <prgn>Makefile</prgn> directly.  This allows the user to
            reconfigure the package if necessary.  You should
            <em>not</em> configure the package and edit the generated
            <prgn>Makefile</prgn>!  This makes it impossible for
            someone else to later reconfigure the package.</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Documenting your changes</heading>
            
          <p>
            Document your changes and updates to the source package
            properly in the <tt>debian/changelog</tt> file.</p>
            
          <p>
            A copy of the file which will be installed in
            <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/copyright</tt> should be
            in <tt>debian/copyright</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            In non-experimental packages you may only use a format for
            <tt>debian/changelog</tt> which is supported by the most
            recent released version of <prgn>dpkg</prgn>.  If your
            format is not supported and there is general support for
            it you should contact the <prgn>dpkg</prgn> maintainer to
            have the parser script for your format included in the
            <prgn>dpkg</prgn> package. (You will need to agree that
            the parser and its manpage may be distributed under the
            GNU GPL, just as the rest of <prgn>dpkg</prgn>
            is.)</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Error trapping in makefiles</heading>
            
          <p>
            When <prgn>make</prgn> invokes a command in a makefile
            (including your package's upstream makefiles and the
            <tt>debian/rules</tt>) it does so using <tt>sh</tt>.  This
            means that <tt>sh</tt>'s usual bad error handling
            properties apply: if you include a miniature script as one
            of the commands in your makefile you'll find that if you
            don't do anything about it then errors are not detected
            and <prgn>make</prgn> will blithely continue after
            problems.</p>
            
          <p>
            Every time you put more than one shell command (this
            includes using a loop) in a makefile command you
            <em>must</em> make sure that errors are trapped.  For
            simple compound commands, such as changing directory and
            then running a program, using <tt>&amp;&amp;</tt> rather
            than semicolon as a command separator is sufficient.  For
            more complex commands including most loops and
            conditionals you must include a separate <tt>set -e</tt>
            command at the start of every makefile command that's
            actually one of these miniature shell scripts.</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Obsolete constructs and libraries</heading>
            
          <p>
            The include file <prgn>&lt;varargs.h&gt;</prgn> is
            provided to support end-users compiling very old software;
            the library <tt>libtermcap</tt> is provided to support the
            execution of software which has been linked against it
            (either old programs or those such as Netscape which are
            only available in binary form).</p>
            
          <p>
            Debian packages should be ported to include
            <prgn>&lt;stdarg.h&gt;</prgn> and <tt>ncurses</tt> when
            they are built.</p>
        </sect1>
      </sect></chapt>
      
    <chapt><heading>The Operating System</heading>
        
      
      <sect>
        <heading>File system hierarchy</heading>
          
        
        <sect1>
          <heading>Linux File system Structure</heading>
            
          <p>
            The location of all installed files and directories must
            comply (with some exceptions
            <footnote>
              <p>In an as yet unreleased version of the standard, the
                location of the mail spool and state information
                directories has changed; and we proipose to follow the
                latter, since that would mean that we do not ahve to
                move things around again when the new version of the
                FHS comes around). The changes are, amongst others,
                s%/var/mail%/var/spool/mail% and
                s%/var/state%/var/lib%</p>
            </footnote>
            ) with the Linux File system Hierarchy Standard
            (FHS).  The latest version of this document can be found
            alongside this manual or on
            <ftpsite>tsx-11.mit.edu</ftpsite> in
            <ftppath>/pub/linux/docs/linux-standards/fsstnd/</ftppath>.
            Specific questions about following the standard may be
            asked on <prgn>debian-devel</prgn>, or referred to Daniel
            Quinlan, the FHS coordinator, at
            <email>quinlan@pathname.com</email>.</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Site-specific programs</heading>
            
          <p>
            As mandated by the FHS no package should place any
            files in <tt>/usr/local</tt>, either by putting them in
            the file system archive to be unpacked by <prgn>dpkg</prgn>
            or by manipulating them in their maintainer scripts.</p>
            
          <p>
            However, the package should create empty directories below
            <tt>/usr/local</tt> so that the system administrator knows
            where to place site-specific files. These directories
            should be removed on package removal if they are
            empty.</p>
            
          <p>
            Note, that this applies only to directories <em>below</em>
            <tt>/usr/local</tt>, not <em>in</em>
            <tt>/usr/local</tt>. The directory <tt>/usr/local</tt>
            itself may only contain the sub-directories listed in
            FHS, section 4.6. However, you may create directories
            below them as you wish. You may not remove any of the
            directories listed in 4.6, even if you created them.</p>
            
          <p>
            Since <tt>/usr/local</tt> may be mounted read-only from a
            remote server, these directories have to be created and
            removed by the <tt>postinst</tt> and <tt>prerm</tt>
            maintainer scripts. These scripts must not fail if either
            of these operations fail. (In the future, it will be
            possible to tell <prgn>dpkg</prgn> not to unpack files
            matching certain patterns, so that the directories can be
            included in the <tt>.deb</tt> packages and system
            administrators who do not wish these directories in
            /usr/local do not need to have them.)</p>
            
          <p>
            For example, the <prgn>emacs</prgn> package will contain
            <example>
              mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/emacs/site-lisp || true
            </example>
            in the <tt>postinst</tt> script, and
            <example>
              rmdir /usr/local/lib/emacs/site-lisp && \
              rmdir /usr/local/lib/emacs || \
              true
            </example>
            in the <tt>prerm</tt> script.</p>
            
          <p>
            If you do create a directory in <tt>/usr/local</tt> for
            local additions to a package, you must ensure that
            settings in <tt>/usr/local</tt> take precedence over the
            equivalents in <tt>/usr</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            The <tt>/usr/local</tt> directory itself and all the subdirectories
            created by the package should have permissions 2775 (group-writable
            and set-group-id) and be owned by <tt>root.staff</tt>.</p>
        </sect1>
      </sect>
        
      <sect>
        <heading>Users and groups</heading>
          
        <p>
          The Debian system can be configured to use either plain or
          shadow passwords.</p>
          
        <p>
          Some user ids (UIDs) and group ids (GIDs) are reserved
          globally for use by certain packages.  Because some packages
          need to include files which are owned by these users or
          groups, or need the ids compiled into binaries, these ids
          must be used on any Debian system only for the purpose for
          which they are allocated. This is a serious restriction, and
          we should avoid getting in the way of local administration
          policies. In particular, many sites allocate users and/or
          local system groups starting at 100.</p>
          
        <p>
          Apart from this we should have dynamically allocated ids,
          which should by default be arranged in some sensible
          order--but the behaviour should be configurable.</p>
          
        <p>
          No package except <tt>base-passwd</tt> may modify
          <tt>/etc/passwd</tt>, <tt>/etc/shadow</tt>, or
          <tt>/etc/group</tt>.</p>
          
        <p>
          The UID and GID ranges are as follows:
          <taglist>
            <tag>0-99:</tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                Globally allocated by the Debian project, must be the
                same on every Debian system.  These ids will appear in
                the <tt>passwd</tt> and <tt>group</tt> files of all
                Debian systems, new ids in this range being added
                automatically as the <tt>base-passwd</tt> package is
                updated.</p>
                
              <p>
                Packages which need a single statically allocated uid
                or gid should use one of these; their maintainers
                should ask the <tt>base-passwd</tt> maintainer for
                ids.</p>
            </item>
                
            <tag>100-999:</tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                Dynamically allocated system users and groups.
                Packages which need a user or group, but can have this
                user or group allocated dynamically and differently on
                each system, should use `<tt>adduser --system</tt>' to
                create the group and/or user.  <prgn>adduser</prgn>
                will check for the existence of the user or group, and
                if necessary choose an unused id based on the ranged
                specified in <tt>adduser.conf</tt>.</p></item>
                
                
            <tag>1000-29999:</tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                Dynamically allocated user accounts.  By default
                <prgn>adduser</prgn> will choose UIDs and GIDs for
                user accounts in this range, though
                <tt>adduser.conf</tt> may be used to modify this
                behaviour.</p>
            </item>
                
            <tag>30000-59999:</tag>
            <item>
              <p>Reserved.</p></item>
                
                
            <tag>60000-64999:</tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                Globally allocated by the Debian project, but only
                created on demand. The ids are allocated centrally and
                statically, but the actual accounts are only created
                on users' systems on demand.</p>
                
              <p>
                These ids are for packages which are obscure or which
                require many statically-allocated ids.  These packages
                should check for and create the accounts in
                <tt>/etc/passwd</tt> or <tt>/etc/group</tt> (using
                <prgn>adduser</prgn> if it has this facility) if
                necessary.  Packages which are likely to require
                further allocations should have a `hole' left after
                them in the allocation, to give them room to
                grow.</p></item>
                
                
            <tag>65000-65533:</tag>
            <item>
              <p>Reserved.</p></item>
                
                
            <tag>65534:</tag>
            <item>
              <p>User `<tt>nobody</tt>.'</p></item>
                
                
            <tag>65535:</tag>
            <item>
              <p>
                <tt>(uid_t)(-1) == (gid_t)(-1)</tt>. NOT TO BE USED,
                because it is the error return sentinel value.</p>
            </item>
          </taglist>
        </p>
      </sect>
      <sect id="sysvinit">
        <heading>System run levels</heading>
          
        
        <sect1>
          <heading>Introduction</heading>
            
          <p>
            The <tt>/etc/init.d</tt> directory contains the scripts
            executed by <prgn>init</prgn> at boot time and when init
            state (or `runlevel') is changed (see <manref name="init"
            section="8">).</p> <p>
            
            These scripts are being referenced by symbolic links in
            the <tt>/etc/rc<var>n</var>.d</tt> directories.  When
            changing runlevels, <prgn>init</prgn> looks in the
            directory <tt>/etc/rc<var>n</var>.d</tt> for the scripts
            it should execute, where <var>n</var> is the runlevel that
            is being changed to, or `S' for the boot-up scripts.</p>
            <p>
            
            The names of the links all have the form
            <tt>S<var>mm/<var>script</var></var></tt> or
            <tt>K<var>mm/<var>script</var></var></tt> where
            <var>mm</var> is a two-digit number and <var>script</var>
            is the name of the script (this should be the same as the
            name of the actual script in <tt>/etc/init.d</tt>.
            
            When <prgn>init</prgn> changes runlevel first the targets
            of the links whose names starting with a <tt>K</tt> are
            executed, each with the single argument <tt>stop</tt>,
            followed by the scripts prefixed with an <tt>S</tt>, each
            with the single argument <tt>start</tt>.  The <tt>K</tt>
            links are responsible for killing services and the
            <tt>S</tt> link for starting services upon entering the
            runlevel.</p>
            
          <p>
            For example, if we are changing from runlevel 2 to
            runlevel 3, init will first execute all of the <tt>K</tt>
            prefixed scripts it finds in <tt>/etc/rc3.d</tt>, and then
            all of the <tt>S</tt> prefixed scripts.  The links
            starting with <tt>K</tt> will cause the referred-to file
            to be executed with an argument of <tt>stop</tt>, and the
            <tt>S</tt> links with an argument of <tt>start</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            The two-digit number <var>mm</var> is used to decide which
            order to start and stop things in--low-numbered links have
            their scripts run first.  For example, the <tt>K20</tt>
            scripts will be executed before the <tt>K30</tt> scripts.
            This is used when a certain service must be started before
            another.  For example, the name server <prgn>bind</prgn>
            might need to be started before the news server
            <prgn>inn</prgn> so that <prgn>inn</prgn> can set up its
            access lists.  In this case, the script that starts
            <prgn>bind</prgn> should have a lower number than the
            script that starts <prgn>inn</prgn> so that it runs first:
            <example>
              /etc/rc2.d/S17bind
              /etc/rc2.d/S70inn
            </example>
          </p>
        </sect1>
          
        <sect1>
          <heading>Writing the scripts</heading>
            
          <p>
            Packages can and should place scripts in
            <tt>/etc/init.d</tt> to start or stop services at boot
            time or during a change of runlevel.  These scripts should
            be named <tt>/etc/init.d/<var>package</var></tt>, and they
            should accept one argument, saying what to do:
            
            <taglist>
              <tag><tt>start</tt></tag>
              <item><p>start the service,</p></item>
                  
              <tag><tt>stop</tt></tag>
              <item><p>stop the service,</p></item>
                  
              <tag><tt>restart</tt></tag>
              <item><p>stop and restart the service,</p></item>
                  
              <tag><tt>reload</tt></tag>
              <item><p>cause the configuration of the service to be
                  reloaded without actually stopping and restarting
                  the service,</p></item>
                  
              <tag><tt>force-reload</tt></tag> <item><p>cause the
              configuration to be reloaded if the service supports
                  this, otherwise restart the service.</p></item>
            </taglist>
            
            The <tt>start</tt>, <tt>stop</tt>, <tt>restart</tt>, and
            <tt>force-reload</tt> options must be supported by all
            scripts in <tt>/etc/init.d</tt>, the <tt>reload</tt>
            option is optional.</p>
            
          <p>
            The <tt>init.d</tt> scripts should ensure that they will
            behave sensibly if invoked with <tt>start</tt> when the
            service is already running, or with <tt>stop</tt> when it
            isn't, and that they don't kill unfortunately-named user
            processes.  The best way to achieve this is usually to use
            <prgn>start-stop-daemon</prgn>.</p>
            
          <p>
            If a service reloads its configuration automatically (as
            in the case of <prgn>cron</prgn>, for example), the
            <tt>reload</tt> option of the <tt>init.d</tt> script
            should behave as if the configuration has been reloaded
            successfully.</p>
            
          <p>
            These scripts should not fail obscurely when the
            configuration files remain but the package has been
            removed, as the default in <prgn>dpkg</prgn> is to leave
            configuration files on the system after the package has
            been removed.  Only when it is executed with the
            <tt>--purge</tt> option will dpkg remove configuration
            files.  Therefore, you should include a <tt>test</tt>
            statement at the top of the script, like this:
            <example>
              test -f <var>program-executed-later-in-script</var> || exit 0
            </example></p></sect1>
          
        <sect1>
          <heading>Managing the links</heading>
            
          <p>
            A program is provided, <prgn>update-rc.d</prgn>, to make
            it easier for package maintainers to arrange for the
            proper creation and removal of
            <tt>/etc/rc<var>n</var>.d</tt> symbolic links from their
            <tt>postinst</tt> and <tt>postrm</tt> scripts.</p>
            
          <p>
            You should use this script to make changes to
            <tt>/etc/rc<var>n</var>.d</tt> and <em>never</em> include
            any <tt>/etc/rc<var>n</var>.d</tt> symbolic links in the
            actual archive.</p>
            
          <p>
            By default <prgn>update-rc.d</prgn> will start services in
            each of the multi-user state runlevels (2, 3, 4, and 5)
            and stop them in the halt runlevel (0), the single-user
            runlevel (1) and the reboot runlevel (6).  The system
            administrator will have the opportunity to customize
            runlevels by simply adding, moving, or removing the
            symbolic links in <tt>/etc/rc<var>n</var>.d</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            To get the default behaviour for your package, put in your
            <tt>postinst</tt> script
            <example>
              update-rc.d <var>package</var> defaults &gt;/dev/null
            </example>
            and in your <tt>postrm</tt>
            <example>
              if [ purge = "$1" ]; then
              update-rc.d <var>package</var> remove &gt;/dev/null
              fi
            </example></p>
            
          <p>
            This will use a default sequence number of 20.  If it does
            not matter when or in which order the script is run, use
            this default.  If it does, then you should talk to the
            maintainer of the <prgn>sysvinit</prgn> package or post to
            <tt>debian-devel</tt>, and they will help you choose a
            number.</p>
            
          <p>
            For more information about using <tt>update-rc.d</tt>,
            please consult its manpage <manref name="update-rc.d"
            section="8">.</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Boot-time initialization</heading>
            
          <p>
            There is another directory, <tt>/etc/rc.boot</tt>, which
            contains scripts which are run once per machine boot.
            This facility is provided for initialization of hardware
            devices, cleaning up of leftover files, and so forth.</p>
            
          <p>
            For example, the <prgn>kbd</prgn> package provides a
            script here for initialising the keyboard layout and
            console font and mode.</p>
            
          <p>
            The files in <tt>/etc/rc.boot</tt> should <em>not</em> be
            links into <tt>/etc/init.d</tt>--they should be the
            scripts themselves.</p>
            
          <p>
            <tt>rc.boot</tt> should <em>not</em> be used for starting
            general-purpose daemons and similar activities.  This
            should be done using the <tt>rc<var>n</var>.d</tt> scheme,
            above, so that the services can be started and stopped
            cleanly when the runlevel changes or the machine is to be
            shut down or rebooted.</p></sect1>
            
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Notes</heading>
            
          <p>
            <em>Do not</em> include the
            <tt>/etc/rc<var>n</var>.d/*</tt> symbolic links in the
            <tt>.deb</tt> file system archive!  <em>This will cause
            problems!</em> You should create them with
            <prgn>update-rc.d</prgn>, as above.</p>
            
          <p>
            <em>Do not</em> include the <tt>/etc/rc<var>n</var>.d/*</tt> symbolic links in
            <prgn>dpkg</prgn>'s conffiles list!  <em>This will cause
              problems!</em> <em>Do</em>,
            however, include the <tt>/etc/init.d</tt> scripts in
            conffiles.  (This is important since we want to give the
            local system administrator the chance to adapt the scripts
            to the local system--e.g., to disable a service without
            De-installing the package, or to specify some special
            command line options when starting a service--while making
            sure her changes aren't lost during the next package
            upgrade.)</p></sect1>
            
        <sect1>
          <heading>Example</heading>
            
          <p>
            The <prgn>bind</prgn> DNS (nameserver) package wants to
            make sure that the nameserver is running in multiuser
            runlevels, and is properly shut down with the system.  It
            puts a script in <tt>/etc/init.d</tt>, naming the script
            appropriately <tt>bind</tt>.  As you can see, the script
            interprets the argument <tt>reload</tt> to send the
            nameserver a <tt>HUP</tt> signal (causing it to reload its
            configuration); this way the user can say
            <tt>/etc/init.d/bind reload</tt> to reload the name
            server.</p>
            
          <p>
            <example>
              #!/bin/sh
              #
              # Original version by Robert Leslie
              # &lt;rob@mars.org&gt;, edited by iwj and cs
              
              test -x /usr/sbin/named || exit 0
              
              case "$1" in
              start)
              echo -n "Starting domain name service: named"
              start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec /usr/sbin/named
              echo "."
              ;;
              stop)
              echo -n "Stopping domain name service: named"
              start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet  \
              --pidfile /var/run/named.pid --exec /usr/sbin/named
              echo "."
              ;;
              restart)
              echo -n "Restarting domain name service: named"
              start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet  \
              --pidfile /var/run/named.pid --exec /usr/sbin/named
              start-stop-daemon --start --verbose --exec /usr/sbin/named
              echo "."
              ;;
              force-reload|reload)
              echo -n "Reloading configuration of domain name service: named"
              start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet  \
              --pidfile /var/run/named.pid --exec /usr/sbin/named
              echo "."
              ;;
              *)
              echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/bind {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2
              exit 1
              ;;
              esac
              
              exit 0
            </example></p>
            
          <p>
            Another example on which to base your <tt>/etc/init.d</tt>
            scripts is in <tt>/etc/init.d/skeleton</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            If this package is happy with the default setup from
            <prgn>update-rc.d</prgn>, namely an ordering number of 20
            and having named running in all runlevels, it can say in
            its <tt>postinst</tt>:
            <example>
              update-rc.d bind defaults >/dev/null
            </example>
            And in its <tt>postrm</tt>, to remove the links when the
            package is purged: 
            <example>
              if [ purge = "$1" ]; then
              update-rc.d acct remove >/dev/null
              fi
            </example></p>
        </sect1></sect>
        
      <sect>
        <heading>Cron jobs</heading>
          
        <p>
          Packages may not touch the configuration file
          <tt>/etc/crontab</tt>, nor may they modify the files in
          <tt>/var/spool/cron/crontabs</tt>.</p>
          
        <p>
          If a package wants to install a job that has to be executed
          via cron, it should place a file with the name if the
          package in one of the following directories:
          <example>
            /etc/cron.daily
            /etc/cron.weekly
            /etc/cron.monthly
          </example>
          As these directory names say, the files within them are executed on
          a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, respectively.</p>
          
        <p>
          If a certain job has to be executed more frequently than
          `daily,' the package should install a file
          <tt>/etc/cron.d/&lt;package-name&gt;</tt> tagged as
          configuration file. This file uses the same syntax as
          <tt>/etc/crontab</tt> and is processed by <prgn>cron</prgn>
          automatically. (Note, that scripts in the
          <tt>/etc/cron.d</tt> directory are not handled by
          <prgn>anacron</prgn>. Thus, you should only use this
          directory for jobs which may be skipped if the system is not
          running.)</p>
          
        <p>
          All files installed in any of these directories have to be
          scripts (shell scripts, Perl scripts, etc.) so that they can
          easily be modified by the local system administrator. In
          addition, they have to be registered as configuration
          file.</p>
          
        <p>
          The scripts in these directories have to check, if all
          necessary programs are installed before they try to execute
          them. Otherwise, problems will arise when a package was
          removed (but not purged), since the configuration files are
          kept on the system in this situation.</p></sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Console messages</heading>
          
        <p>
          This section describes different formats for messages
          written to standard output by the <tt>/etc/init.d</tt>
          scripts. The intent is to improve the consistency of
          Debian's startup and shutdown look and feel.</p>
          
        <p>
          Please look very careful at the details. We want to get the
          messages to look exactly the same way concerning spaces,
          punctuation, and case of letters.</p>
          
        <p>
          Here is a list of overall rules that you should use when you
          create output messages. They can be useful if you have a
          non-standard message that isn't covered in the sections
          below.</p>
          
        <p>
          <list>
            <item>
              <p>
                Every message should cover one line, start with a
                capital letter and end with a period `.'.</p></item>
                
                
            <item>  
              <p>
                If you want to express that the computer is working on
                something (performing a specific task, not starting or
                stopping a program), we use an ``ellipsis'', namely
                three dots `...'. Note that we don't insert spaces in
                front of or behind the dots.  If the task has been
                completed we write `done.' and a line feed.</p></item>
                
                
            <item>
              <p>
                Design your messages as if the computer is telling you
                what he is doing (let him be polite :-) but don't
                mention ``him'' directly.  For example, if you think
                of saying
                <example>
                  I'm starting network daemons: nfsd mountd.
                </example>
                just say
                <example>
                  Starting network daemons: nfsd mountd.
                </example></p></item>
          </list></p>
          
        <p>
          The following formats must be used</p>
          
        <p>
          <list>
            <item>
              <p>when daemons get started.</p>
                
              <p>
                Use this format if your script starts one or more
                daemons.  The output should look like this (a single
                line, no leading spaces):
                <example>
                  Starting &lt;description&gt;: &lt;daemon-1&gt; &lt;daemon-2&gt; &lt;...&gt; &lt;daemon-n&gt;.
                </example>
                The &lt;description&gt; should describe the subsystem
                the daemon or set of daemons are part of, while
                &lt;daemon-1&gt; up to &lt;daemon-n&gt; denote each
                daemon's name (typically the file name of the
                program).</p>
                
              <p>
                For example, the output of /etc/init.d/lpd would look like:
                <example>
                  Starting printer spooler: lpd.
                </example></p>
                
              <p>
                This can be achieved by saying
                <example>
                  echo -n "Starting printer spooler: lpd"
                  start-stop-daemon --start --quiet lpd
                  echo "."
                </example>
                in the script. If you have more than one daemon to
                start, you should do the following:
                <example>
                  echo -n "Starting remote file system services:"
                  echo -n " nfsd"; start-stop-daemon --start --quiet nfsd
                  echo -n " mountd"; start-stop-daemon --start --quiet mountd
                  echo -n " ugidd"; start-stop-daemon --start --quiet ugidd
                  echo "."
                </example>
                This makes it possible for the user to see what takes
                so long and when the final daemon has been
                started. Please be careful where to put spaces: In the
                example above the system administrator can easily
                comment out a line if he don't wants to start a
                specific daemon, while the displayed message still
                looks good.</p></item>
                
                
            <item>
              <p>when something needs to be configured.</p>
                
              <p>
                If you have to set up different parameters of the
                system upon boot up, you can use this format:
                <example>
                  Setting &lt;parameter&gt; to `&lt;value&gt;'.
                </example></p>
                
              <p>
                You can use the following echo statement to get the quotes right:
                <example>
                  echo "Setting DNS domainname to \`"value"'."
                </example></p>
                
              <p>
                Note that the left quotation mark (`) is different
                from the right (').</p></item> 
              
            <item>
              <p>when a daemon is stopped.</p>
                
              <p>
                When you stop a daemon you should issue a message
                similar to the startup message, except that `Starting'
                is replaced with `Stopping'.</p>
                
              <p>
                So stopping the printer daemon will like like this:
                <example>
                  Stopping printer spooler: lpd.
                </example></p></item>
              
            <item>
              <p>when something is executed.</p>
                
              <p>
                There a several examples where you have to run a
                program at system startup or shutdown to perform a
                specific task. For example, setting the system's clock
                via `netdate' or killing all processes when the system
                comes down. Your message should like this:
                <example>
                  Doing something very useful...done.
                </example>
                You should print the `done.' right after the job has been completed,
                so that the user gets informed why he has to wait. You can get this
                behaviour by saying
                <example>
                  echo -n "Doing something very useful..."
                  do_something
                  echo "done."
                </example>
                in your script.</p></item>
              
            <item>
              <p>when the configuration is reloaded.</p>
                
              <p>
                When a daemon is forced to reload its configuration
                files you should use the following format:
                <example>
                  Reloading &lt;daemon's-name&gt; configuration...done.
                </example></p></item>
              
            <item>
              <p>when none of the above rules apply.</p>
                
              <p>
                If you have to print a message that doesn't fit into
                the styles described above, you can use something
                appropriate, but please have a look at the overall
                rules listed above.</p></item>
          </list></p></sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Menus</heading>

        <p>
          Menu entries should follow the current menu policy as
          defined in the file <ftpsite>ftp.debian.org</ftpsite> in
          <ftppath>/debian/doc/package-developer/menu_policy.txt</ftppath>
          or your local mirror.
        </p>

        <p>
          The Debian <tt>menu</tt> packages provides a unique
          interface between packages providing applications and
          documents, and <em>menu programs</em> (either X window
          managers or text-based menu programs as
          <prgn>pdmenu</prgn>).</p>
          
        <p>
          All packages that provide applications that need not be
          passed any special command line arguments for normal
          operation should register a menu entry for those
          applications, so that users of the <tt>menu</tt> package
          will automatically get menu entries in their window
          managers, as well in shells like <tt>pdmenu</tt>.</p>
          
        <p>
          Please refer to the <em>Debian Menu System</em> document
          that comes with the <tt>menu</tt> package for information
          about how to register your applications and web
          documents.</p></sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Keyboard configuration</heading>
          
        <p>
          To achieve a consistent keyboard configuration (i.e., all
          applications interpret a keyboard event the same way) all
          programs in the Debian distribution have to be configured to
          comply with the following guidelines.</p>
          
        <p>
          Here is a list that contains certain keys and their interpretation:
          
          <taglist>
            <tag><tt>&lt;--</tt></tag>
            <item><p>delete the character to the left of the cursor</p></item>
                
            <tag><tt>Delete</tt></tag>
            <item><p>delete the character to the right of the cursor</p></item>
                
            <tag><tt>Control+H</tt></tag>
            <item><p>emacs: the help prefix</p></item>
          </taglist>
          
          The interpretation of any keyboard events should be
          independent of the terminal that's used (either the console,
          X terminal emulators, rlogin/telnet session, etc.).</p>
          
        <p>
          The following list explains how the different programs
          should be set up to achieve this:</p>
          
        <p>
          <list compact="compact">
            <item><p>`<tt>&lt;--</tt>' generates KB_Backspace in
                X.</p></item> 
                
            <item><p>`<tt>Delete</tt>' generates KB_Delete in X.</p></item>
                
            <item>
              <p>
                X translations are set up to make KB_Backspace
                generate ASCII DEL, and to make KB_Delete generate
                <tt>ESC [ 3 ~</tt> (this is the vt220 escape code for
                the `delete character' key).  This must be done by
                loading the resources using xrdb on all local X
                displays, not using the application defaults, so that
                the translation resources used correspond to the
                xmodmap settings.</p></item>
                
            <item>
              <p>
                The Linux console is configured to make
                `<tt>&lt;--</tt>' generate DEL, and `Delete' generate
                <tt>ESC [ 3 ~</tt> (this is the case at the
                moment).</p></item>
                
            <item><p>
                X applications are configured so that Backspace
                deletes left, and Delete deletes right.  Motif
                applications already work like this.</p></item>
                
            <item><p>stty erase <tt>^?</tt> .</p></item>
                
            <item><p>
                The `xterm' terminfo entry should have <tt>ESC [ 3
                ~</tt> for kdch1, just like TERM=linux and
                TERM=vt220.</p></item>
                
            <item><p>
                Emacs is programmed to map KB_Backspace or the `stty
                erase' character to delete-backward-char, and
                KB_Delete or kdch1 to delete-forward-char, and
                <tt>^H</tt> to help as always.</p></item>
                
            <item><p>
                Other applications use the `stty erase' character and
                kdch1 for the two delete keys, with ASCII DEL being
                `delete previous character' and kdch1 being `delete
                character under cursor'.</p></item>
          </list></p>
          
        <p>
          This will solve the problem except for:</p>
          
        <p>
          <list compact="compact">
            <item><p>
                Some terminals have a <tt>&lt;--</tt> key that cannot
                be made to produce anything except <tt>^H</tt>.  On
                these terminals Emacs help will be unavailable on
                <tt>^H</tt> (assuming that the `stty erase' character
                takes precedence in Emacs, and has been set
                correctly).  M-x help or F1 (if available) can be used
                instead.</p></item>
                
            <item><p>
                Some operating systems use <tt>^H</tt> for stty erase.
                However, modern telnet versions and all rlogin
                versions propagate stty settings, and almost all UNIX
                versions honour stty erase.  Where the stty settings
                are not propagated correctly things can be made to
                work by using stty manually.</p></item>
                
            <item><p>
                Some systems (including previous Debian versions) use
                xmodmap to arrange for both <tt>&lt;--</tt> and Delete
                to generate KB_Delete).  We can change the behaviour
                of their X clients via the same X resources that we
                use to do it for our own, or have our clients be
                configured via their resources when things are the
                other way around.  On displays configured like this
                Delete will not work, but <tt>&lt;--</tt>
                will.</p></item>
                
            <item><p>
                Some operating systems have different kdch1 settings
                in their terminfo for xterm and others.  On these
                systems the Delete key will not work correctly when
                you log in from a system conforming to our policy, but
                <tt>&lt;--</tt> will.</p></item>
          </list>
        </p>
      </sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Environment variables</heading>
          
        <p>
          No program may depend on environment variables to get
          reasonable defaults. (That's because these environment
          variables would have to be set in a system-wide
          configuration file like /etc/profile, which is not supported
          by all shells.)</p>
          
        <p>
          If a program should depend on environment variables for its
          configuration, the program has to be changed to fall back to
          a reasonable default configuration if these environment
          variables are not present. If this cannot be done easily
          (e.g., if the source code of a non-free program is not
          available), the program should be replaced by a small
          `wrapper' shell script which sets the environment variables
          and calls the original program.</p>
          
        <p>
          Here is an example of a wrapper script for this purpose:
          
          <example>
            #!/bin/sh
            BAR=/var/lib/fubar
            export BAR
            exec /usr/lib/foo/foo "$@"
          </example></p>
          
        <p>
          Furthermore, as <tt>/etc/profile</tt> is a configuration
          file of the <prgn>bash</prgn> package, no other package may
          put any environment variables or other commands into that
          file.</p>
      </sect>
    </chapt>
    <chapt>
        <heading>Files</heading>
          
        
        <sect>
          <heading>Binaries</heading>
            
          <p>
            It is not allowed that two packages install programs with
            different functionality but with the same filenames. (The
            case of two programs having the same functionality but
            different implementations is handled via `alternatives.')
            If this case happens, one of the programs has to be
            renamed. The maintainers should report this to the
            developers' mailing and try to find a consensus about
            which package will have to be renamed.  If a consensus can
            not be reached, <em>both</em> programs must be
            renamed.</p>
            
          <p>
            Generally the following compilation parameters should be used:
            <example>
              CC = gcc 
              CFLAGS = -O2 -g -Wall # sane warning options vary between programs 
              LDFLAGS = # none 
              install -s # (or use strip on the files in debian/tmp)
            </example></p>
            
          <p>
            Note that all installed binaries should be stripped,
            either by using the <tt>-s</tt> flag to
            <prgn>install</prgn>, or by calling <prgn>strip</prgn> on
            the binaries after they have been copied into
            <tt>debian/tmp</tt> but before the tree is made into a
            package.</p>
            
          <p>
            The <tt>-g</tt> flag is useful on compilation so that you
            have available a full set of debugging symbols in your
            built source tree, in case anyone should file a bug report
            involving (for example) a core dump.</p>
            
          <p>
            The <tt>-N</tt> flag should not be used.  On a.out systems
            it may have been useful for some very small binaries, but
            for ELF it has no good effect.</p>
            
          <p>
            It is up to the package maintainer to decide what
            compilation options are best for the package.  Certain
            binaries (such as computationally-intensive programs) may
            function better with certain flags (<tt>-O3</tt>, for
            example); feel free to use them.  Please use good judgment
            here.  Don't use flags for the sake of it; only use them
            if there is good reason to do so.  Feel free to override
            the upstream author's ideas about which compilation
            options are best--they are often inappropriate for our
            environment.</p></sect>
            
            
        <sect>
          <heading>Libraries</heading>
            
          <p>
            All libraries must have a shared version in the lib
            package and a static version in the lib-dev package. The
            shared version must be compiled with <tt>-fPIC</tt>, and
            the static version must not be. In other words, each
            <tt>*.c</tt> file is compiled twice.</p>
            
          <p>
            You have to specify the gcc option <tt>-D_REENTRANT</tt>
            when building a library (either static or shared) to make
            the library compatible with LinuxThreads.</p>
            
          <p>
            Note that all installed shared libraries should be
            stripped with
            <example>
              strip --strip-unneeded &lt;your-lib&gt;
            </example> 
            (The option `--strip-unneeded' makes <tt>strip</tt> remove
            only the symbols which aren't needed for relocation
            processing.)  Shared libraries can function perfectly well
            when stripped, since the symbols for dynamic linking are
            in a separate part of the ELF object file.</p>
            
          <p>
            Note that under some circumstances it may be useful to
            install a shared library unstripped, for example when
            building a separate package to support debugging.
        </p>
        
        <p>
          An ever increasing number of packages are using libtool to
          do their linking. The latest GNU libtools (>= 1.3a) can take
          advantage of installed libtool archive files (`*.la'). The
          main advantage of libtool's .la files is that it allows
          libtool to store and subsequently access metadata with
          respect to the libraries it builds.  libtool will search for
          those files, which contain a lot of useful information about
          a library (e.g. dependency libraries for static
          linking). Also, they're essential for programs using
          libltdl.
        </p>

        <p>
          Certainly libtool is fully capable of linking against shared
          libraries which don't have .la files, but being a mere shell
          script it can add considerably to the build time of a
          libtool using package if that shellscript has to derive all
          this infomation from first principles for each library every
          time it is linked. With the advent of libtool-1.4 (and to a
          lesser extent libtool-1.3), the .la files will also store
          information about inter-library dependencies which cannot
          necessarily be derived after the .la file is deleted.
        </p>

        <p>
          Packages that use libtool to create shared libraries must
          include the <em>.la</em> files in the <em>-dev</em>
          packages. This is a good idea in general, and espescially
          for static linking issues.
        </p>
        
        <p>
          Please make sure that you use only released versions of
          shared libraries to build your packages; otherwise other
          users will not be able to run your binaries
          properly. Producing source packages that depend on
          unreleased compilers is also usually a bad
          idea.
        </p>
      </sect>
            
            
        <sect>
          <heading>Shared libraries</heading>
            
          <p>
            Packages involving shared libraries should be split up
            into several binary packages.</p>
            
          <p>
            For a straightforward library which has a development
            environment and a runtime kit including just shared
            libraries you need to create two packages:
            <tt><var>libraryname</var><var>soname</var></tt>
            (<var>soname</var> is the shared object name of the shared
            library--it's the thing that has to match exactly between
            building an executable and running it for the dynamic
            linker to be able run the program; usually the
            <var>soname</var> is the major number of the library) and
            <tt><var>libraryname</var><var>soname</var>-dev</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            If you prefer only to support one development version at a
            time you may name the development package
            <tt><var>libraryname</var>-dev</tt>; otherwise you may
            wish to use <prgn>dpkg</prgn>'s conflicts mechanism to
            ensure that the user only installs one development version
            at a time (after all, different development versions are
            likely to have the same header files in them, causing a
            filename clash if both are installed).  Typically the
            development version will also need an exact version
            dependency on the runtime library, to make sure that
            compilation and linking happens correctly.</p>
            
          <p>
            Packages which use the shared library should have a
            dependency on the name of the shared library package,
            <tt><var>libraryname</var><var>soname</var></tt>.  When
            the <var>soname</var> changes you can have both versions
            of the library installed while moving from the old library
            to the new.</p>
            
          <p>
            If your package has some run-time support programs which
            use the shared library you must <em>not</em> put them in
            the shared library package.  If you do that then you won't
            be able to install several versions of the shared library
            without getting filename clashes.  Instead, either create
            a third package for the runtime binaries (this package
            might typically be named
            <tt><var>libraryname</var>-runtime</tt>--note the absence
            of the <var>soname</var> in the package name) or if the
            development package is small include them in there.</p>
            
          <p>
            If you have several shared libraries built from the same
            source tree you can lump them all together into a single
            shared library package, provided that you change all their
            <var>soname</var>s at once (so that you don't get filename
            clashes if you try to install different versions of the
            combined shared libraries package).</p>
            
          <p>
            Follow the directions in the <em>Debian Packaging
            Manual</em> for putting the shared library in its package,
            and make sure you include a <tt>shlibs</tt> control area
            file with details of the dependencies for packages which
            use the library.</p>
            
          <p>
            Shared libraries should <em>not</em> be installed
            executable, since <prgn>ld.so</prgn> does not require this
            and trying to execute a shared library results in a core
            dump.</p></sect>
            
            
        <sect id="scripts">
          <heading>Scripts</heading>
            
          <p>
            All command scripts, including the package maintainer
            scripts inside the package and used by <prgn>dpkg</prgn>,
            should have a <tt>#!</tt> line naming the shell to be used
            to interpret them.</p>
            
          <p>
            In the case of Perl scripts this should be
            <tt>#!/usr/bin/perl</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            Shell scripts (<prgn>sh</prgn> and <prgn>bash</prgn>)
            should almost certainly start with <tt>set -e</tt> so that
            errors are detected.  Every script <em>must</em> use
            <tt>set -e</tt> or check the exit status of <em>every</em>
            command.</p>
            
          <p>
            The standard shell interpreter `<tt>/bin/sh</tt>' may be a
            symbolic link to any POSIX compatible shell. Thus, shell
            scripts specifying `<tt>/bin/sh</tt>' as interpreter may
            only use POSIX features. If a script requires non-POSIX
            features from the shell interpreter, the appropriate shell
            has to be specified in the first line of the script (e.g.,
            `<tt>#!/bin/bash</tt>') and the package has to depend on
            the package providing the shell (unless the shell package
            is marked `Essential', e.g., in the case of
            <prgn>bash</prgn>).</p>
            
          <p>
            Restrict your script to POSIX features when possible so
            that it may use <tt>/bin/sh</tt> as its interpreter. If
            your script works with <prgn>ash</prgn>, it's probably
            POSIX compliant, but if you are in doubt, use
            <tt>/bin/bash</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            Perl scripts should check for errors when making any
            system calls, including <tt>open</tt>, <tt>print</tt>,
            <tt>close</tt>, <tt>rename</tt> and <tt>system</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            <prgn>csh</prgn> and <prgn>tcsh</prgn> should be avoided
            as scripting languages.  See <em>Csh Programming
            Considered Harmful</em>, one of the <tt>comp.unix.*</tt>
          FAQs.  It can be found on 
          <url id="http://language.perl.com/versus/csh.whynot">, or
          <url id="http://www.cpan.org/doc/FMTEYEWTK/versus/csh.whynot">
          or even on <ftpsite>ftp.cpan.org</ftpsite> 
          <ftppath>/pub/perl/CPAN/doc/FMTEYEWTK/versus/csh.whynot</ftppath>.
          If an upstream package comes with <prgn>csh</prgn> scripts
          then you must make sure that they start with
          <tt>#!/bin/csh</tt> and make your package depend on the
          <prgn>c-shell</prgn> virtual package.</p>
            
          <p>
            Any scripts which create files in world-writable
            directories (e.g., in <tt>/tmp</tt>) have to use a
            mechanism which will fail if a file with the same name
            already exists.</p>
            
          <p>
            The Debian base distribution provides the
            <prgn>tempfile</prgn> and <prgn>mktemp</prgn> utilities
            for use by scripts for this purpose.</p></sect>
            
            
        <sect>
          <heading>Symbolic links</heading>
            
          <p>
            In general, symbolic links within a toplevel directory
            should be relative, and symbolic links pointing from one
            toplevel directory into another should be absolute. (A
            toplevel directory is a sub-directory of the root
            directory `/'.)</p>
            
          <p>
            In addition, symbolic links should be specified as short
            as possible, i.e., link targets like `foo/../bar' are
            deprecated.</p>
            
          <p>
            Note that when creating a relative link using
            <prgn>ln</prgn> it is not necessary for the target of the
            link to exist relative to the working directory you're
            running <prgn>ln</prgn> from; nor is it necessary to
            change directory to the directory where the link is to be
            made.  Simply include the string that should appear as the
            target of the link (this will be a pathname relative to
            the directory in which the link resides) as the first
            argument to <prgn>ln</prgn>.</p>
            
          <p>
            For example, in your <prgn>Makefile</prgn> or
            <tt>debian/rules</tt>, do things like:
            <example>
              ln -fs gcc $(prefix)/bin/cc 
              ln -fs gcc debian/tmp/usr/bin/cc 
              ln -fs ../sbin/sendmail $(prefix)/bin/runq 
              ln -fs ../sbin/sendmail debian/tmp/usr/bin/runq
            </example></p>
            
          <p>
            A symbolic link pointing to a compressed file should
            always have the same file extension as the referenced
            file. (For example, if a file `<tt>foo.gz</tt>' is
            referenced by a symbolic link, the filename of the link
            has to end with `<tt>.gz</tt>' too, as in
            `bar.gz.')</p></sect>
            
            
        <sect>
          <heading>Device files</heading>
            
          <p>
            No package may include device files in the package file
            tree.</p>
            
          <p>
            If a package needs any special device files that are not
            included in the base system, it has to call
            <prgn>makedev</prgn> in the <tt>postinst</tt> script,
            after asking the user for permission to do so.</p>
            
          <p>
            No package should remove any device files in the
            <tt>postrm</tt> or any other script. This is left to the
            system administrator.</p>
            
          <p>
            Debian uses the serial devices
            <tt>/dev/tty*</tt>. Programs using the old
            <tt>/dev/cu*</tt> devices should be changed to use
            <tt>/dev/tty*</tt>.</p></sect>
            
            
        <sect>
          <heading>Configuration files</heading>
            
          <p>
            Any configuration files created or used by your package
            should reside in <tt>/etc</tt>.  If there are several you
            should consider creating a subdirectory named after your
            package.</p>
            
          <p>
            It is almost certain that any file in <tt>/etc</tt> that
            is in your package's file system archive should be listed
            in <prgn>dpkg</prgn>'s <tt>conffiles</tt> control area
            file.  (See the <em>Debian Packaging
            Manual</em>).</p>
            
          <p>
            Only packages that are tagged <em>conflicting</em> with
            each other may specify the same file as
            <tt>conffile</tt>. A package may not modify a
            configuration file of another package.</p>
            
          <p>
            If two or more packages use the same configuration file,
            one of these packages has to be defined as <em>owner</em>
            of the configuration file, i.e., it has to list the file
            as <tt>conffile</tt> and has to provide a program that
            modifies the configuration file.</p>
            
          <p>
            The other packages have to depend on the <em>owner</em>
            package and use that program to update the configuration
            file.</p>
            
          <p>
            Sometimes it's appropriate to build a new package, which
            just provides the basic <em>infrastructure</em> for the
            other packages and which manages the shared configuration
            files. (Check out the <prgn>sgml-base</prgn> package as an
            example.)</p>
            
          <p>
            Files in <tt>/etc/skel</tt> will automatically be copied
            into new user accounts by <prgn>adduser</prgn>.  They
            should not be referenced there by any program.</p>
            
          <p>
            Therefore, if a program needs a dotfile to exist in
            advance in <tt>$HOME</tt> to work sensibly that dotfile
            should be installed in <tt>/etc/skel</tt> (and listed in
            conffiles, if it is not generated and modified dynamically
            by the package's installation scripts).</p>
            
          <p>
            However, programs that require dotfiles in order to
            operate sensibly (dotfiles that they do not create
            themselves automatically, that is) are a bad thing, and
            programs should be configured by the Debian default
            installation as close to normal as possible.</p>
            
          <p>
            Therefore, if a program in a Debian package needs to be
            configured in some way in order to operate sensibly that
            configuration should be done in a site-wide global
            configuration file elsewhere in <tt>/etc</tt>.  Only if
            the program doesn't support a site-wide default
            configuration and the package maintainer doesn't have time
            to add it should a default per-user file be placed in
            <tt>/etc/skel</tt>.</p>
            
          <p>
            <tt>/etc/skel</tt> should be as empty as we can make it.
            This is particularly true because there is no easy
            mechanism for ensuring that the appropriate dotfiles are
            copied into the accounts of existing users when a package
            is installed.</p>
            
        <p>
          Ideally the sysadmin should not have to do any
          configuration other than that done (semi-)automatically by
          the <tt>postinst</tt> script.</p>
      </sect>
      
      <sect>
        <heading>Log files</heading>
        <p>
          The traditional approach to log files has been to set up ad
          hoc log rotation schemes using simple shell scripts and
          cron. While this approach is highly customizable, it
          requires quite a lot of sysadmin work. Even though the
          original Debian system helped a little by automatically
          installing a system which can be used as a template, this
          was deemed not enough. 
        </p>

        <p>
          A better scheme is to use logrotate, a GPL'd program
          developed by Red Hat, which centralizes log management. It
          has both a config file (<tt>/etc/logrotate.conf</tt>) and a
          directory where packages can drop logrotation info
          (<tt>/etc/logrotate.d</tt>). 
        </p>

        <p>
          Log files should usually be named
          <tt>/var/log/<var>package</var>.log</tt>.  If you have many
          log files, or need a separate directory for permissions
          reasons (<tt>/var/log</tt> is writable only by
          <tt>root</tt>), you should usually create a directory named
          <tt>/var/log/<var>package</var></tt>.</p>
        
        <p>
          Make sure that any log files are rotated occasionally so
          that they don't grow indefinitely; the best way to do this
          is to drop a script into the directory
          <tt>/etc/logrotate.d</tt> and use the facilities provided by
          logrotate. Here is a good example for a logrotate config
          file (for more information see <manref name="logrotate"
                                                 section="8">):
          <example>
        /var/log/foo/* {
                rotate 12
                weekly
                compress
                postrotate
                        /etc/init.d/foo force-reload
                endscript
        }
          </example>      
          Which rotates all files under `/var/log/foo', saves 12
          compressed generations, and sends a HUP signal at the end of
          rotation.

        </p>
        
        <p>
          Make sure that any log files are removed when the package is
          purged (but not when it is only removed), by checking the
          argument to the <tt>postrm</tt> script (see the <em>Debian
          Packaging Manual</em> for details).</p>
      </sect>
            
            
        <sect>
          <heading>Permissions and owners</heading>
            
          <p>
            The rules in this section are guidelines for general use.
            If necessary you may deviate from the details below.
            However, if you do so you must make sure that what is done
            is secure and you must try to be as consistent as possible
            with the rest of the system.  You should probably also
            discuss it on <prgn>debian-devel</prgn> first.</p>
            
          <p>
            Files should be owned by <tt>root.root</tt>, and made
            writable only by the owner and universally readable (and
            executable, if appropriate).</p>
            
          <p>
            Directories should be mode 755 or (for group-writability)
            mode 2775.  The ownership of the directory should be
            consistent with its mode--if a directory is mode 2775, it
            should be owned by the group that needs write access to
            it.</p>
            
          <p>
            Setuid and setgid executables should be mode 4755 or 2755
            respectively, and owned by the appropriate user or group.
            They should not be made unreadable (modes like 4711 or
            2711 or even 4111); doing so achieves no extra security,
            because anyone can find the binary in the freely available
            Debian package--it is merely inconvenient.  For the same
            reason you should not restrict read or execute permissions
            on non-set-id executables.</p>
            
          <p>
            Some setuid programs need to be restricted to particular
            sets of users, using file permissions.  In this case they
            should be owned by the uid to which they are set-id, and
            by the group which should be allowed to execute them.
            They should have mode 4754; there is no point in making
            them unreadable to those users who must not be allowed to
            execute them.</p>
            
          <p>
            Do not arrange that the system administrator can only
            reconfigure the package to correspond to their local
            security policy by changing the permissions on a binary.
            Ordinary files installed by <prgn>dpkg</prgn> (as opposed
            to conffiles and other similar objects) have their
            permissions reset to the distributed permissions when the
            package is reinstalled.  Instead you should consider (for
            example) creating a group for people allowed to use the
            program(s) and making any setuid executables executable
            only by that group.</p>
            
          <p>
            If you need to create a new user or group for your package
            there are two possibilities.  Firstly, you may need to
            make some files in the binary package be owned by this
            user or group, or you may need to compile the user or
            group id (rather than just the name) into the binary
            (though this latter should be avoided if possible).  In
            this case you need a statically allocated id.</p>
            
          <p>
            You must ask for a user or group id from the base system
            maintainer, and must not release the package until you
            have been allocated one.  Once you have been allocated one
            you must make the package depend on a version of the base
            system with the id present in <tt>/etc/passwd</tt> or
            <tt>/etc/group</tt>, or alternatively arrange for your
            package to create the user or group itself with the
            correct id (using <tt>adduser</tt>) in its pre- or
            post-installation script (the latter is to be preferred if
            it is possible).</p>
            
          <p>
            On the other hand, the program may able to determine the
            uid or gid from the group name at runtime, so that a
            dynamic id can be used.  In this case you must choose an
            appropriate user or group name, discussing this on
            <prgn>debian-devel</prgn> and checking with the base
            system maintainer that it is unique and that they do not
            wish you to use a statically allocated id instead.  When
            this has been checked you must arrange for your package to
            create the user or group if necessary using
            <prgn>adduser</prgn> in the pre- or post-installation
            script (again, the latter is to be preferred if it is
            possible).</p>
            
          <p>
            Note that changing the numeric value of an id associated with a name
            is very difficult, and involves searching the file system for all
            appropriate files.  You need to think carefully whether a static or
            dynamic id is required, since changing your mind later will cause
            problems.</p>
        </sect>
    </chapt>

    <chapt>
      <heading>Customized programs</heading>
        
      <sect id="arch-spec">
        <heading>Architecture specification strings</heading>
          
        <p>
          If a program needs to specify an <em>architecture specification
            string</em> in some place, the following format has to be used:
          <example>
            &lt;arch&gt;-&lt;os&gt;
          </example>
          where `&lt;arch&gt;' is one of the following: i386, alpha, arm, m68k,
          powerpc, sparc and `&lt;os&gt;' is one of: linux, gnu.  Use
          of <em>gnu</em> in this string is reserved for the GNU/Hurd
          operating system.  .</p> 
        <p>
          Note, that we don't want to use `&lt;arch&gt;-debian-linux'
          to apply to the rule `architecture-vendor-os' since this
          would make our programs incompatible to other Linux
          distributions. Also note, that we don't use
          `&lt;arch&gt;-unknown-linux', since the `unknown' does not
          look very good.</p></sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Daemons</heading>
          
        <p>
          The configuration files <tt>/etc/services</tt>,
          <tt>/etc/protocols</tt>, and <tt>/etc/rpc</tt> are managed
          by the <prgn>netbase</prgn> package and may not be modified
          by other packages.</p>
          
        <p>
          If a package requires a new entry in one of these files, the
          maintainer has to get in contact with the
          <prgn>netbase</prgn> maintainer, who will add the entries
          and release a new version of the <prgn>netbase</prgn>
          package.</p>
          
        <p>
          The configuration file <tt>/etc/inetd.conf</tt> may be
          modified by the package's scripts only via the
          <prgn>update-inetd</prgn> script or the
          <prgn>DebianNet.pm</prgn> Perl module.</p>
          
        <p>
          If a package wants to install an example entry into
          <tt>/etc/inetd.conf</tt>, the entry has to be preceded with
          exactly one hash character (#). Such lines are treated as
          `commented out by user' by the <prgn>update-inetd</prgn>
          script and are not changed or activated during a package
          updates.</p></sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Using pseudo-ttys and modifying wtmp, utmp and lastlog</heading>
          
        <p>
          Some programs need to create pseudo-ttys. This should be done
          using Unix98 ptys if the C library supports it. The resulting
          program must not be installed setuid root, unless that
          is required for other functionality.
        </p>
        
        <p>
          The files <tt>/var/run/utmp</tt>, <tt>/var/log/wtmp</tt> and
          <tt>/var/log/lastlog</tt> must be installed writeable by
          group utmp.  Programs who need to modify those files must
          be installed install setgid utmp.
        </p>
      </sect>

      <sect>
        <heading>Editors and pagers</heading>
          
        <p>
          Some programs have the ability to launch an editor or pager
          program to edit or display a text document. Since there are
          lots of different editors and pagers available in the Debian
          distribution, the system administrator and each user should
          have the possibility to choose his/her preferred editor and
          pager.</p>
          
        <p>
          In addition, every program should choose a good default
          editor/pager if none is selected by the user or system
          administrator.</p>
          
        <p>
          Thus, every program that launches an editor or pager has to
          use the EDITOR or PAGER environment variables to determine
          the editor/pager the user wants to get started. If these
          variables are not set, the programs `/usr/bin/editor' and
          `/usr/bin/pager' have to be used, respectively.</p>
          
        <p>
          These two files are managed through `alternatives.' That is,
          every package providing an editor or pager has to call the
          `update-alternatives' script to register these programs.</p>
          
        <p>
          If it is very hard to adapt a program to make us of the
          EDITOR and PAGER variable, that program should be configured
          to use `/usr/bin/sensible-editor' and
          `/usr/bin/sensible-pager' as editor or pager program,
          respectively. These are two scripts provided in the Debian
          base system that check the EDITOR and PAGER variables and
          launches the appropriate program or falls back to
          `/usr/bin/editor' and `/usr/bin/pager', automatically.</p>
          
        <p>
          Since the Debian base system already provides an editor and
          a pager program, there is no need for a package to depend on
          `editor' and `pager', nor is it necessary for a package to
          provide such virtual packages.</p></sect>
          
          
      <sect id="web-appl">
        <heading>Web servers and applications</heading>
          
        <p>
          This section describes the locations and URLs that have to
          be used by all web servers and web application in the Debian
          system.</p>
          
        <p>
          <enumlist>
            <item>
              <p>Cgi-bin executable files are installed in the
                directory
                <example>
                  /usr/lib/cgi-bin/&lt;cgi-bin-name&gt;
                </example>
                and can be referred to as
                <example>
                  http://localhost/cgi-bin/&lt;cgi-bin-name&gt;
                </example></p></item>
                
                
            <item><p>Access to html documents</p>
                
              <p>
                Html documents for a package are stored in
                /usr/share/doc/<var>package</var> and can be referred to as
                <example>
                  http://localhost/doc/&lt;package&gt;/&lt;filename&gt;
                </example></p></item>
                
                
            <item><p>Web Document Root</p>
                
              <p>
                Web Applications should try to avoid storing files in
                the Web Document Root.  Instead use the
                /usr/share/doc/&lt;package&gt; directory for documents and
                register the Web Application via the menu package. If
                access to the web-root is unavoidable then use
                <example>
                  /var/www
                </example> 
                as the Document Root. This might be just a
                symbolic link to the location where the sysadmin has
                put the real document root.</p>
            </item>
            
          </enumlist></p></sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Mail transport agents</heading>
          
        <p>
          Debian packages which process electronic mail, whether
          mail-user-agents (MUAs) or mail-transport-agents (MTAs),
          <em>must</em> make sure that they are compatible with the
          configuration decisions below.  Failure to do this may
          result in lost mail, broken <tt>From:</tt> lines, and other
          serious brain damage!</p>
          
        <p>
          The mail spool is <tt>/var/spool/mail</tt> and the interface
          to send a mail message is <tt>/usr/sbin/sendmail</tt> (as
          per the FHS).  The mail spool is part of the base system
          and not part of the MTA package.</p>
          
        <p>
          All Debian MUAs and MTAs have to use the <tt>maillock</tt>
          and <tt>mailunlock</tt> functions provided by the
          <tt>liblockfile</tt> packages to lock and unlock mail
          boxes. These functions implement a NFS-safe locking
          mechanism. (It is ok if MUAs and MTAs don't link against
          liblockfile but use a <em>compatible</em> mechanism. Please
          compare the mechanisms very carefully!)</p>
          
        <p>
          Mailboxes are generally 660 <tt><var>user</var>.mail</tt>
          unless the user has chosen otherwise.  A MUA may remove a
          mailbox (unless it has nonstandard permissions) in which
          case the MTA or another MUA must recreate it if needed.
          Mailboxes must be writable by group mail.</p>
          
        <p>
          The mail spool is 2775 <tt>mail.mail</tt>, and MUAs need to
          be setgid mail to do the locking mentioned above (and
          obviously need to avoid accessing other users' mailboxes
          using this privilege).</p>
          
        <p>
          <tt>/etc/aliases</tt> is the source file for the system mail
          aliases (e.g., postmaster, usenet, etc.)--it is the one
          which the sysadmin and <tt>postinst</tt> scripts may edit.
          After <tt>/etc/aliases</tt> is edited the program or human
          editing it must call <prgn>newaliases</prgn>.  All MTA
          packages should come with a <prgn>newaliases</prgn> program,
          even if it does nothing, but older MTA packages do not do
          this so programs should not fail if <prgn>newaliases</prgn>
          cannot be found.</p>
          
        <p>
          The convention of writing <tt>forward to
          <var>address</var></tt> in the mailbox itself is not
          supported.  Use a <tt>.forward</tt> file instead.</p>
          
        <p>
          The location for the <prgn>rmail</prgn> program used by UUCP
          for incoming mail is <tt>/usr/sbin/rmail</tt>, as per the
          FHS.  Likewise, <prgn>rsmtp</prgn>, for receiving
          batch-SMTP-over-UUCP, is in <tt>/usr/sbin/rsmtp</tt> if it
          is supported.</p>
          
        <p>
          If you need to know what name to use (for example) on
          outgoing news and mail messages which are generated locally,
          you should use the file <tt>/etc/mailname</tt>.  It will
          contain the portion after the username and <tt>@</tt> (at)
          sign for email addresses of users on the machine (followed
          by a newline).</p>
          
        <p>
          A package should check for the existence of this file.  If
          it exists it should use it without comment. (An MTA's
          prompting configuration script may wish to prompt the user
          even if it finds this file exists.) If it does not exist it
          should prompt the user for the value and store it in
          <tt>/etc/mailname</tt> as well as using it in the package's
          configuration.  The prompt should make it clear that the
          name will not just be used by that package.  For example, in
          this situation the INN package says:
          <example>
            Please enter the `mail name' of your system.  This is the
            hostname portion of the address to be shown on outgoing
            news and mail messages.  The default is
            <var>syshostname</var>, your system's host name.  Mail
            name [`<var>syshostname</var>']:
          </example>
          where <var>syshostname</var> is the output of <tt>hostname
            --fqdn</tt>.</p></sect> 
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>News system configuration</heading>
          
        <p>
          All the configuration files related to the NNTP (news)
          servers and clients should be located under
          <tt>/etc/news</tt>.</p>
          
        <p>
          There are some configuration issues that apply to a number
          of news clients and server packages on the machine. These
          are:
          
          <taglist>
            <tag>/etc/news/organization</tag>
            <item><p>A string which shall appear as the
                organization header for all messages posted
                by NNTP clients on the machine</p></item>
                
            <tag>/etc/news/server</tag>
            <item><p>Contains the FQDN of the upstream NNTP
                server, or localhost if the local machine is
                an NNTP server.</p></item>
          </taglist>
          
          Other global files may be added as required for cross-package news 
          configuration.</p></sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Programs for the X Window system</heading>
          
        <p>
          Some programs can be configured with or without support for
          the X Window System.  Typically, binaries produced when
          built with X support will need the X shared libraries to
          run.</p>
          
        <p>
          Such programs should be configured <em>with</em> X support,
          and should declare a dependency on <tt>xlib6g</tt> (which
          contains X shared libraries).  Users who wish to use the
          program can install just the relatively small
          <tt>xfree86-common</tt> and <tt>xlib6g</tt> packages, and do
          not need to install the whole of X.
        </p>
          
        <p>
          Do not create two versions (one with X support and one
          without) of your package.</p>
          
        <p>
          <em>Application defaults</em> files have to be installed in
          the directory <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/</tt>.
          They are considered as part of the program code.  Thus, they
          should not be modified and should not be tagged as
          <em>conffile</em>.  If the local system administrator wants
          to customise X applications globally, a file with the same
          name as that of the package should be placed in the
          <tt>/etc/X11/Xresources/</tt> directory instead.
          <em>Important:</em> packages that install files into the
          <tt>/etc/X11/Xresources/</tt> directory <em>must</em>
          declare a conflict with <tt>xbase (&lt;&lt;
          3.3.2.3a-2)</tt>; if this is not done it is possible for the
          package to destroy a previously-existing
          <tt>/etc/X11/Xresources</tt> <em>file</em>.
        </p>

        <p>
          No package should ever install files into the directories
          <tt>/usr/bin/X11/</tt>, <tt>/usr/share/doc/X11/</tt>,
          <tt>/usr/include/X11/</tt>, or <tt>/usr/lib/X11/</tt>; these
          directories are actually symbolic links, which <tt>dpkg</tt>
          does not follow when unpacking a package.  Instead, use
          <tt>/usr/X11R6/bin/</tt>,
          <tt>/usr/share/doc/</tt><var>package/</var> (i.e., place
          files with the rest of your package's documentation),
          <tt>/usr/X11R6/include/</tt>, and <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/</tt>.
          It is permissible, and even preferable, however, for a
          package to refer to the <tt>/usr/{bin,include,lib}/X11/</tt>
          directories internally, however; this restriction governs
          only the paths used by the package as it is unpacked onto
          the system.
        </p>
          
        <p>
          If you package a program that requires the (non-free)
          OSF/Motif library, you should try to determine if the
          programs works reasonably well with the free
          re-implementation of Motif called LessTif.  If so, build the
          package using the LessTif libraries; it can then go into the
          main section of the package repository and become an
          official part of the Debian distribution.
        </p>

        <p>
          If however, the Motif-based program works insufficiently
          well with LessTif, you should instead provide "-smotif" and
          "-dmotif" versions (appending these identifiers to the name
          of the package), which are statically and dynamically linked
          against the Motif libraries, respectively.  (All known
          versions of OSF/Motif permit redistribution of
          statically-linked binaries using the library, but check the
          license on your copy of Motif to be sure.)  This two-package
          approach allows users without Motif to use the package,
          whereas users with Motif installed can enjoy the advantages
          of the dynamically-linked version (a considerable savings in
          disk space usage, download time, etc.).  Neither "-smotif"
          nor "-dmotif" packages can go into the main section; if the
          licensing on the package is compatible with the Debian Free
          Software Guidelines, it may go into the contrib section;
          otherwise it must go into the non-free section.
        </p>
      </sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Emacs lisp programs</heading>
          
        <p>
          Please refer to the `Debian Emacs Policy' (documented in
          <tt>debian-emacs-policy.gz</tt> of the
          <prgn>emacsen-common</prgn> package) for details of how to
          package emacs lisp programs.</p></sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Games</heading>
          
        <p>
          The permissions on /var/lib/games are 755
          <tt>root.root</tt>.</p>
          
        <p>
          Each game decides on its own security policy.</p>
          
        <p>
          Games which require protected, privileged access to
          high-score files, savegames, etc., must be made
          set-<em>group</em>-id (mode 2755) and owned by
          <tt>root.games</tt>, and use files and directories with
          appropriate permissions (770 <tt>root.games</tt>, for
          example).  They must <em>not</em> be made
          set-<em>user</em>-id, as this causes security problems. (If
          an attacker can subvert any set-user-id game they can
          overwrite the executable of any other, causing other players
          of these games to run a Trojan horse program.  With a
          set-group-id game the attacker only gets access to less
          important game data, and if they can get at the other
          players' accounts at all it will take considerably more
          effort.)</p>
          
        <p>
          Some packages, for example some fortune cookie programs, are
          configured by the upstream authors to install with their
          data files or other static information made unreadable so
          that they can only be accessed through set-id programs
          provided.  Do not do this in a Debian package: anyone can
          download the <tt>.deb</tt> file and read the data from it,
          so there is no point making the files unreadable.  Not
          making the files unreadable also means that you don't have
          to make so many programs set-id, which reduces the risk of a
          security hole.</p>
          
        <p>
          As described in the FHS, binaries of games should be
          installed in the directory <tt>/usr/games</tt>. This also
          applies to games that use the X Window system. Manual pages
          for games (X and non-X games) should be installed in
          <tt>/usr/share/man/man6</tt>.</p>
      </sect>
    </chapt>
      
    <chapt><heading>Documentation</heading>
        
      
      <sect>
        <heading>Manual pages</heading>
          
        <p>
          You must install manual pages in <prgn>nroff</prgn> source
          form, in appropriate places under <tt>/usr/share/man</tt>.  You
          should only use sections 1 to 9 (see the FHS for more
          details).  You must <em>not</em> install a preformatted `cat
          page'.</p>
          
        <p>
          If no manual page is available for a particular program,
          utility or function and this is reported as a bug on
          debian-bugs, a symbolic link from the requested manual page
          to the <manref name="undocumented" section="7"> manual page
          should be provided.  This symbolic link can be created from
          <tt>debian/rules</tt> like this:
          <example>
            ln -s ../man7/undocumented.7.gz \
            debian/tmp/usr/share/man/man[1-9]/the_requested_manpage.[1-9].gz
          </example> 
          This manpage claims that the lack of a manpage has been
          reported as a bug, so you may only do this if it really has
          (you can report it yourself, if you like).  Do not close the
          bug report until a proper manpage is available.</p>
          
        <p>
          You may forward a complaint about a missing manpage to the
          upstream authors, and mark the bug as forwarded in the
          Debian bug tracking system.  Even though the GNU Project do
          not in general consider the lack of a manpage to be a bug,
          we do--if they tell you that they don't consider it a bug
          you should leave the bug in our bug tracking system open
          anyway.</p>
          
        <p>
          Manual pages should be installed compressed using <tt>gzip
          -9</tt>.</p>
          
        <p>
          If one manpage needs to be accessible via several names it
          is better to use a symbolic link than the <tt>.so</tt>
          feature, but there is no need to fiddle with the relevant
          parts of the upstream source to change from <tt>.so</tt> to
          symlinks--don't do it unless it's easy.  Do not create hard
          links in the manual page directories, and do not put
          absolute filenames in <tt>.so</tt> directives.  The filename
          in a <tt>.so</tt> in a manpage should be relative to the
          base of the manpage tree (usually
          <tt>/usr/share/man</tt>).</p></sect>
          
          
      <sect>
        <heading>Info documents</heading>
          
        <p>
          Info documents should be installed in <tt>/usr/share/info</tt>.
          They should be compressed with <tt>gzip -9</tt>.</p>
          
        <p>
          Your package must call <prgn>install-info</prgn> to update the Info
          <tt>dir</tt>
          file, in its post-installation script:
          <example>
            install-info --quiet --section Development Development \
            /usr/share/info/foobar.info
          </example></p>
          
        <p>
          It is a good idea to specify a section for the location of
          your program; this is done with the <tt>--section</tt>
          switch.  To determine which section to use, you should look
          at <tt>/usr/share/info/dir</tt> on your system and choose the most
          relevant (or create a new section if none of the current
          sections are relevant).  Note that the <tt>--section</tt>
          flag takes two arguments; the first is a regular expression
          to match (case-insensitively) against an existing section,
          the second is used when creating a new one.</p>
          
        <p>
          You must remove the entries in the pre-removal script:
          <example>
            install-info --quiet --remove /usr/share/info/foobar.info
          </example></p>
          
        <p>
          If <prgn>install-info</prgn> cannot find a description entry
          in the Info file you will have to supply one.  See <manref
          name="install-info" section="8"> for details.</p>
      </sect>
      
      <sect>
        <heading>Additional documentation</heading>
        
        <p>
          Any additional documentation that comes with the package can
          be installed at the discretion of the package maintainer.
          Text documentation should be installed in a directory
          <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var></tt>, where
          <var>package</var> is the name of the package, and
          compressed with <tt>gzip -9</tt> unless it is small.</p>
        
        <p>
          If a package comes with large amounts of documentation which
          many users of the package will not require you should create
          a separate binary package to contain it, so that it does not
          take up disk space on the machines of users who do not need
          or want it installed.</p>
        
        <p>
          It is often a good idea to put text information files
          (<tt>README</tt>s, changelogs, and so forth) that come with
          the source package in <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var></tt>
          in the binary package.  However, you don't need to install
          the instructions for building and installing the package, of
          course!</p>
      </sect>
      
      <sect>
        <heading>Preferred documentation formats</heading>
        
        <p>
          The unification of Debian documentation is being carried out
          via HTML.</p>
        
        <p>
          If your package comes with extensive documentation in a
          mark up format that can be converted to various other formats
          you should if possible ship HTML versions in a binary
          package, in the directory
          <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>appropriate package</var></tt> or its
          subdirectories.
          <footnote>
            <p>The rationale: The important thing here is that HTML
              docs should be available in <em>some</em> package, not
              necessarily in the main binary package, though. </p>
          </footnote>
        </p>
        
        <p>
          Other formats such as PostScript may be provided at your
          option.</p>
      </sect>
      
      <sect id="copyrightfile">
        <heading>Copyright information</heading>
        
        <p>
          Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its
          copyright and distribution license in the file
          /usr/share/doc/&lt;package-name&gt;/copyright. This file must
          neither be compressed nor be a symbolic link.</p>
        
        <p>
          In addition, the copyright file must say where the upstream
          sources (if any) were obtained, and explain briefly what
          modifications were made in the Debian version of the package
          compared to the upstream one.  It must name the original
          authors of the package and the Debian maintainer(s) who were
          involved with its creation.</p>
        
        <p>
          /usr/share/doc/&lt;package-name&gt; may be a symbolic link to a
          directory in /usr/share/doc only if two packages both come from
          the same source and the first package has a "Depends"
          relationship on the second.  These rules are important
          because copyrights must be extractable by mechanical
          means.</p>
        
        <p>
          Packages distributed under the UCB BSD license, the Artistic
          license, the GNU GPL, and the GNU LGPL should refer to the
          files /usr/share/common-licenses/BSD,
          /usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic,
          /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL, and
          /usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL.
          <footnote>
            <p>
              Why "licenses" and not "copyright"? Because
              <tt>/usr/doc/copyright</tt> used to contain all the
              copyright files, plus the four common licenses GPL,
              LGPL, Artistic and BSD. Now individual copyright files
              for packages are no longer in a common directory. Once
              <tt>/usr/doc/copyright</tt> is almost empty it makes
              sense to rename "copyright" to "licenses"
            </p> 
            <p>
              Why "common-licenses" and not "licenses"? Because if I
              put just "licenses" I'm sure I will receive a bug report
              saying "license foo is not included in the licenses
              directory. They are not all the licenses, just a few
              common ones. I could use /usr/share/doc/common-licenses
              but I think this is too long, and, after all, the GPL
              does not "document" anything, it is merely a licence.
            </p>
          </footnote>
        </p>
        
        <p>
          Do not use the copyright file as a general <tt>README</tt>
          file.  If your package has such a file it should be
          installed in <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/README</tt> or
          <tt>README.Debian</tt> or some other appropriate place.</p>
      </sect>
      
      <sect>
        <heading>Examples</heading>
        
        <p>
          Any examples (configurations, source files, whatever),
          should be installed in a directory
          <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/examples</tt>.  These files
          should not be referenced by any program--they're there for
          the benefit of the system administrator and users, as
          documentation only.</p>
      </sect>
      
      <sect id="instchangelog">
        <heading>Changelog files</heading>
        
        <p>
          This installed file must contain a copy of the
          <tt>debian/changelog</tt> file from your Debian source tree,
          and a copy of the upstream changelog file if there is one.
          The debian/changelog file should be installed in
          <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var></tt> as
          <tt>changelog.Debian.gz</tt>.  If the upstream changelog
          file is text formatted, it must be accessible as
          <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/changelog.gz</tt>.  If
          the upstream changelog file is HTML formatted, it must be
          accessible as
          <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/changelog.html.gz</tt>.
          If the upstream changelog files do not already conform to
          this naming convention, then this may be achieved by either
          renaming the files or adding a symbolic link at the
          packaging developer's discretion.  </p>
        
        <p>
          Both should be installed compressed using <tt>gzip -9</tt>,
          as they will become large with time even if they start out
          small.</p>
        
        <p>
          If the package has only one changelog which is used both as
          the Debian changelog and the upstream one because there is
          no separate upstream maintainer then that changelog should
          usually be installed as
          <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/changelog.gz</tt>; if
          there is a separate upstream maintainer, but no upstream
          changelog, then the Debian changelog should still be called
          <tt>changelog.Debian.gz</tt>.</p>
      </sect>
    </chapt>    
  </book>
</debiandoc>