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5 upgrading-checklist.html
6 Author : Manoj Srivastava ( srivasta@tiamat.datasync.com )
7 Created On : Thu Oct 29 20:54:48 1998
8 Created On Node : tiamat.datasync.com
9 Last Modified By : Manoj Srivastava
10 Last Modified On : Fri Jan 19 14:01:36 2001
11 Last Machine Used: glaurung.green-gryphon.com
13 Status : Unknown, Use with caution!
20 <title>Policy checklist for upgrading your packages</title>
24 <h1>Policy checklist for upgrading your packages</h1>
26 <h2>About the checklist</h2>
29 The checklist below has been created to simplify the upgrading process
30 of old packages. Note, that this list is not `official.' If you have
31 doubts about a certain topic, if you need more details, or if you
32 think some other package does not comply with policy, please refer to
37 Here is how the check list works: Check out which policy version your
38 packages complies with currently. Than move upwards until the top and
39 check which of the items on the list might concern your package. If an
40 item does not give you enough details, please check out the Policy
44 <h2>The checklist</h2>
50 - If your package had fonts for the X Window System, and you
51 converted BDF to PCF formats, the <tt>bdftopcf</tt> utility has
52 moved to the xutils package.
53 - Font packages for the X Window System must now declare a
54 dependency on xutils >= 4.0.2
59 - If your package has a daemon startup script in /etc/init.d/,
60 and that script has parameters a system administrator may need,
61 you need to modify the script to read values from a conffile
62 placed in /etc/default/ directory. This conffile maybe sourced
63 by the init.d script to determine the sonfigurable values (and
64 the conffile may contain only variable settings and comments).
65 - Files in /usr/share/doc may not be referenced by any
66 program. If such files are needed, they must be placed in
67 /usr/share/package-name/, and symbolic links created as required
68 in /usr/share/doc/package-name/
73 - A package of priority standard or higher may provide two
74 binaries, one compiled with support for the X Window System,
75 and the other without.
81 - By default executables should not be built with the debugging
82 option -g. Instead, it is recommended to support building the
83 package with debugging information optionally. Please look at the
84 examples using DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS in the policy manual.
85 - Policy for packages where the upstream uses html changelog
86 files has been expanded. In short, a plain text changelog file
87 should always be generated for the upstream changes.
88 - Please note that the new release of the X window system (4.x)
89 shall probably need sweeping changes in policy.
90 - Policy for packages providing an X server has been codified
91 (formalizes existing practice - use virtual package xserver)
92 - Policy for packages providing an X terminal emulator has been
93 codified (use virtual package x-terminal-emulator)
94 - Policy for packages providing an X window manager has been
95 codified (use virtual package x-window-manager, and also as an
96 alternative for /usr/bin/x-window-manager. The policy has
97 guidelines on how to calculate priority)
98 - Policy for packages providing an X fonts has been
99 codified. Please look into the manual for details; this section
100 has been written from scratch.
101 - Policy for packages using the X Window System and FHS issues
102 has been clarified. Please read the manual for details.
103 - Policy for packages providing an X application default has been
105 - No package may contain or make hard links to conffiles.
108 - Noted that newer dpkg versions do not require extreme care in
109 always creating the shared lib before the symlink, so the unpack
115 - Correction to semantics of architecture lists in Build-Depends
116 etc. Should not affect many packages.
121 - /usr/doc/<package> has to be a symlink pointing to
122 /usr/share/doc/<package>. This symlink has to be
123 maintained by postinst and prerm, because dpkg will cause
124 problems otherwise. Create/remote the symlinks using debhelper
125 or see section "6.4. Accessing the documentation" for more
127 - Introduced source dependencies. (Whereas this ought to demand a
128 major policy number rise, we've only just had one of them, so
129 I'm going to use a minor number instead.)
130 - /etc/rc.boot has been deprecated in favour of /etc/rcS.d.
131 Packages should not be touching this directory, anyway, but
132 should use update-rc.d instead.
133 - update-rc.d is now the *only* allowable way of accessing the
134 /etc/rc?.d/[SK]??* links. Any scripts which manipulate them
135 directly must be changed to use update-rc.d instead. (This is
136 because the file-rc package handles this information in an
138 - Compiled examples go in /usr/lib/<package>/examples with
139 symlinks from /usr/share/doc/<package>/examples/* or from
140 /usr/share/doc/<package>/examples itself.
141 - Updated FHS to a 2.1 draft; this reverts /var/state to
143 - Added MIME sub-policy document.
144 - VISUAL is allowed as a (higher priority) alternative to EDITOR.
145 - Modified liblockfile description, which affects
146 mailbox-accessing programs. Please see the policy document for
148 - If a package provides a changelog in HTML format, a text-only
149 version should also be included. Such a version may be prepared
150 using lynx -dump -nolist.)
153 - Description of how to handle version numbers based on dates
154 added: see section 5.1.
160 - Added the clarification that the .la files are essential for the
161 packages using libtool's libltdl library, in which case the
162 .la files must go in the run-time library package.
168 - Debian formally moves from the FSSTND to the FHS. This is a
169 major change, and the implications of this move are probably
171 - Only 3 digits of the Standards version need be included in
172 control files, though all four digits are still permitted.
173 - The location of the GPL has changed to
174 /usr/share/common-licenses. This may require changing the
175 copyright files to point to the correct location of the GPL and
177 - Packages that use libtool to create shared libraries must
178 include the .la files in the -dev packages.
179 - Use logrotate to rotate log files
180 - section 5.8 has been rewritten (Programs for the X Window
182 - There is now anassociated menu policy, in a separate document,
183 that carries the full weight of Debian policy.
184 - The files `/var/run/utmp', `/var/log/wtmp' and
185 `/var/log/lastlog' must be installed writeable by group
186 utmp. Programs who need to modify those files must be installed
193 - Rearranged the manual to create a new Section 4, Files
194 + Section 3.3 ("Files") was moved to Section 4. The Sections
195 that were Section 4 and Section 5 were moved down to become
196 Section 5 and Section 6.
197 + What was Section 5.5 ("Log files") is now a subsection of the
198 new Section 4 ("Files"), becoming section 4.8, placed after
199 "Configuration files", moving the Section 4.8 ("Permissions
200 and owners") to Section 4.9. All subsections of the old
201 Section 5 after 5.5 were moved down to fill in the number
203 - Modified the section about changelog files to accommodate
204 upstream changelogs which were formatted as HTML/ These
205 upstream changelog files should now be accessible as
206 /usr/doc/package/changelog.html.gz
207 + Symlinks are permissible to link the real, or upstream,
208 changelog name to the Debian mandated name.
209 - Clarified that HTML documentation should be present in some
210 package, though not necessarily the main binary package.
211 - Corrected all references to the location of the copyright
212 files. The correct location is /usr/doc/package/copyright
213 - Ratified the architecture specification strings to cater to the
219 - Updated section 3.3.5 Symbolic links:
220 + symbolic links within a toplevel directory should be relative,
221 symbolic links between toplevel directories should be absolute
222 (cf., Policy Weekly Issue#6, topic 2)
224 - Updated section 4.9 Games:
225 + manpages for games should be installed in /usr/man/man6
226 (cf., Policy Weekly Issue#6, topic 3)
229 - Updated prefix of chapter 12, Shared Libraries:
230 ldconfig must be called in the postinst script if the package
231 installs shared libraries
232 (cf., Policy Weekly Issue #6, fixes:bug#20515)
236 - Updated section 3.3.4 Scripts:
237 + /bin/sh may be any POSIX compatible shell
238 + scripts including bashisms have to specify /bin/bash as
240 + scripts which create files in world-writable directories
241 (e.g., in /tmp) should use tempfile or mktemp for creating
244 - Updated section 3.3.5 Symbolic Links:
245 + symbolic links referencing compressed files must have the same
246 file extension as the referenced file
248 - Updated section 3.3.6 Device files:
249 + /dev/tty* serial devices should be used instead of /dev/cu*
251 - Updated section 3.4.2 Writing the scripts [in /etc/init.d]:
252 + all /etc/init.d scripts have to provide the following options:
253 start, stop, restart, force-reload
254 + the reload option is optional and must never stop and restart
257 - Updated section 3.5 Cron jobs:
258 + cron jobs that need to be executed more often than daily should
259 be installed into /etc/cron.d
261 - Updated section 3.7 Menus:
262 + removed section about how to register HTML docs to `menu'
263 (the corresponding section in 4.4, Web servers and applications,
264 has been removed in policy 2.2.0.0 already, so this one was
267 - New section 3.8 Keyboard configuration:
268 + details about how the backspace and delete keys should be
271 - New section 3.9 Environment variables:
272 + no program must depend on environment variables to get a
273 reasonable default configuration
275 - New section 4.6 News system configuration:
276 + /etc/news/organization and /etc/news/server should be supported
277 by all news servers and clients
279 - Updated section 4.7 Programs for the X Windows system:
280 + programs requiring a non-free Motif library should be provided
281 as foo-smotif and foo-dmotif package
282 + if lesstif works reliably for such program, it should be linked
283 against lesstif and not against a non-free Motif library
285 - Updated section 4.9 Games:
286 + games for X Windows have to be installed in /usr/games, just as
289 2.3.0.1, 2.3.0.0 Sep 97
291 * new section `4.2 Daemons' including rules for
292 /etc/services, /etc/protocols, /etc/rpc, and /etc/inetd.conf
294 * updated section about `Configuration files':
295 packages may not touch other packages' configuration files
297 * MUAs and MTAs have to use liblockfile
301 * added section 4.1 `Architecture specification strings':
304 where <arch> is one of the following:
305 i386, alpha, arm, m68k, powerpc, sparc.
307 * detailed rules for /usr/local
311 * editor/pager policy
317 * don't install shared libraries as executable
319 * app-defaults files may not be conffiles
321 2.1.3.2, 2.1.3.1, 2.1.3.0 Mar 97
323 * two programs with different functionality must not have the
328 * "Standard for Console Messages"
330 * Libraries should be compiled with `-D_REENTRANT'
332 * Libraries should be stripped with "strip --strip-unneeded"
334 2.1.2.2, 2.1.2.1, 2.1.2.0 Nov 96
336 * Some changes WRT shared libraries
340 * No hard links in source packages
342 * Do not use dpkg-divert or update-alternatives without consultation
344 * Shared libraries must be installed stripped
348 * Upstream changelog must be installed too
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