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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 : Sat Apr 28 13:36:28 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'; it simply
31 gives an indication of what has changed and whether you are likely to
32 need to make changes to your package in light of this. If you have
33 doubts about a certain topic, if you need more details, or if you
34 think some other package does not comply with policy, please refer to
35 the Policy Manual itself. All of the changes from version 3.0.0
36 onwards indicate which section of the Policy Manual discusses the
37 issue: [3.4] means section 3.4. The section numbering changed when
38 the packaging manual was incorporated into policy; the section numbers
39 used below refer to the current version.
43 Here is how the check list works: Check which policy version your
44 package complies with currently (indicated in the "Standards-Version"
45 field of the source package). Then move upwards until the top and
46 check which of the items on the list might concern your package. Note
47 which sections of policy discuss this, and then check out the Policy
48 Manual for details. If you are upgrading from Policy version < 2.5.0,
49 it may be easier to check through the whole of policy instead of
50 picking your way through this list.
53 <h2>The checklist</h2>
58 - [Clarified note in 3.5.3.0 upgrading checklist regarding
59 examples and templates: this refers only to those examples used
60 by scripts; see section 11.7.3 for the whole story]
65 - The system-wide mail directory is now /var/mail, no longer
66 /var/spool/mail. Any packages accessing the mail spool should
67 access it via /var/mail and include a suitable Depends field;
69 - The perl policy is now part of Debian policy proper. Perl
70 programs and modules should follow the current Perl policy
76 - Build-Depends arch syntax has been changed to be less
77 ambiguous. This should not affect any current packages [7.1]
78 - Examples and templates files for use by scripts should now live
79 in /usr/share/<package> or /usr/lib/<package>, with
80 symbolic links from /usr/share/doc//<package>/examples as
86 - X app-defaults directory has moved from
87 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults to /etc/X11/app-defaults [12.8]
92 - dpkg-shlibdeps now uses objdump, so shared libraries have to be
93 run through dpkg-shlibdeps as well as executables [9.1]
98 - Font packages for the X Window System must now declare a
99 dependency on xutils (>= 4.0.2) [12.8]
104 - Daemon startup scripts in /etc/init.d/ should not contain
105 modifiable parameters; these should be moved to a file in
106 /etc/default/; see [10.3.2] for details
107 - Files in /usr/share/doc must not be referenced by any
108 program. If such files are needed, they must be placed in
109 /usr/share/<package>/, and symbolic links created as required
110 in /usr/share/doc/<package>/ [13.3]
111 - Much of the packaging manual has now been imported into the
117 - A package of priority standard or higher may provide two
118 binaries, one compiled with support for the X Window System,
119 and the other without [12.8]
124 - By default executables should not be built with the debugging
125 option -g. Instead, it is recommended to support building the
126 package with debugging information optionally. Details in [11.1]
127 - Policy for packages where the upstream uses HTML changelog
128 files has been expanded. In short, a plain text changelog file
129 should always be generated for the upstream changes [13.8]
130 - Please note that the new release of the X window system (4.x)
131 shall probably need sweeping changes in policy
132 - Policy for packages providing the following X-based features
133 has been codified [12.8]:
134 - X server (virtual package xserver)
135 - X terminal emulator (virtual package x-terminal-emulator)
136 - X window manager (virtual package x-window-manager, and
137 /usr/bin/x-window-manager alternative, with priority
138 calculation guidelines)
139 - X fonts (this section has been written from scratch)
140 - X application defaults
141 - Policy for packages using the X Window System and FHS issues
142 has been clarified; see [12.8]
143 - No package may contain or make hard links to conffiles [11.7.3]
144 - Noted that newer dpkg versions do not require extreme care in
145 always creating the shared lib before the symlink, so the unpack
151 - Correction to semantics of architecture lists in Build-Depends
152 etc. Should not affect many packages [7.1]
157 - /usr/doc/<package> has to be a symlink pointing to
158 /usr/share/doc/<package>, to be maintained by postinst
159 and prerm scripts. Details are in [13.4]
160 - Introduced source dependencies (Build-Depends, etc.) [7.1, 7.6]
161 - /etc/rc.boot has been deprecated in favour of /etc/rcS.d.
162 (Packages should not be touching this directory, but should use
163 update-rc.d instead) [10.3.4]
164 - update-rc.d is now the *only* allowable way of accessing the
165 /etc/rc?.d/[SK]??* links. Any scripts which manipulate them
166 directly must be changed to use update-rc.d instead. (This is
167 because the file-rc package handles this information in an
168 incompatible way.) [10.3.3]
169 - Architecture-specific examples go in /usr/lib/<package>/examples
170 with symlinks from /usr/share/doc/<package>/examples/* or from
171 /usr/share/doc/<package>/examples itself [13.7]
172 - Updated FHS to a 2.1 draft; this reverts /var/state to
174 - Added MIME sub-policy document [10.7; mime-policy]
175 - VISUAL is allowed as a (higher priority) alternative to EDITOR [12.4]
176 - Modified liblockfile description, which affects
177 mailbox-accessing programs. Please see the policy document for
179 - If a package provides a changelog in HTML format, a text-only
180 version should also be included. (Such a version may be prepared
181 using lynx -dump -nolist.) [13.8]
182 - Description of how to handle version numbers based on dates
188 - Added the clarification that the .la files are essential for the
189 packages using libtool's libltdl library, in which case the
190 .la files must go in the run-time library package [11.2]
195 - Debian formally moves from the FSSTND to the FHS. This is a
196 major change, and the implications of this move are probably
197 not all known. [10.1]
198 - Only 3 digits of the Standards version need be included in
199 control files, though all four digits are still permitted. [2.4.1]
200 - The location of the GPL has changed to
201 /usr/share/common-licenses. This may require changing the
202 copyright files to point to the correct location of the GPL and
203 other major licenses [13.6]
204 - Packages that use libtool to create shared libraries must
205 include the .la files in the -dev packages [11.2]
206 - Use logrotate to rotate log files [11.8]
207 - section 5.8 has been rewritten (Programs for the X Window
209 - There is now an associated menu policy, in a separate document,
210 that carries the full weight of Debian policy [10.6; menu-policy]
211 - Programs which need to modify the files /var/run/utmp,
212 /var/log/wtmp and /var/log/lastlog must be installed setgid utmp [12.3]
218 - Rearranged the manual to create a new Section 4, Files
219 + Section 3.3 ("Files") was moved to Section 4. The Sections
220 that were Section 4 and Section 5 were moved down to become
221 Section 5 and Section 6.
222 + What was Section 5.5 ("Log files") is now a subsection of the
223 new Section 4 ("Files"), becoming section 4.8, placed after
224 "Configuration files", moving the Section 4.8 ("Permissions
225 and owners") to Section 4.9. All subsections of the old
226 Section 5 after 5.5 were moved down to fill in the number
228 - Modified the section about changelog files to accommodate
229 upstream changelogs which were formatted as HTML/ These
230 upstream changelog files should now be accessible as
231 /usr/doc/package/changelog.html.gz
232 + Symlinks are permissible to link the real, or upstream,
233 changelog name to the Debian mandated name.
234 - Clarified that HTML documentation should be present in some
235 package, though not necessarily the main binary package.
236 - Corrected all references to the location of the copyright
237 files. The correct location is /usr/doc/package/copyright
238 - Ratified the architecture specification strings to cater to the
244 - Updated section 3.3.5 Symbolic links:
245 + symbolic links within a toplevel directory should be relative,
246 symbolic links between toplevel directories should be absolute
247 (cf., Policy Weekly Issue#6, topic 2)
249 - Updated section 4.9 Games:
250 + manpages for games should be installed in /usr/man/man6
251 (cf., Policy Weekly Issue#6, topic 3)
254 - Updated prefix of chapter 12, Shared Libraries:
255 ldconfig must be called in the postinst script if the package
256 installs shared libraries
257 (cf., Policy Weekly Issue #6, fixes:bug#20515)
261 - Updated section 3.3.4 Scripts:
262 + /bin/sh may be any POSIX compatible shell
263 + scripts including bashisms have to specify /bin/bash as
265 + scripts which create files in world-writable directories
266 (e.g., in /tmp) should use tempfile or mktemp for creating
269 - Updated section 3.3.5 Symbolic Links:
270 + symbolic links referencing compressed files must have the same
271 file extension as the referenced file
273 - Updated section 3.3.6 Device files:
274 + /dev/tty* serial devices should be used instead of /dev/cu*
276 - Updated section 3.4.2 Writing the scripts [in /etc/init.d]:
277 + all /etc/init.d scripts have to provide the following options:
278 start, stop, restart, force-reload
279 + the reload option is optional and must never stop and restart
282 - Updated section 3.5 Cron jobs:
283 + cron jobs that need to be executed more often than daily should
284 be installed into /etc/cron.d
286 - Updated section 3.7 Menus:
287 + removed section about how to register HTML docs to `menu'
288 (the corresponding section in 4.4, Web servers and applications,
289 has been removed in policy 2.2.0.0 already, so this one was
292 - New section 3.8 Keyboard configuration:
293 + details about how the backspace and delete keys should be
296 - New section 3.9 Environment variables:
297 + no program must depend on environment variables to get a
298 reasonable default configuration
300 - New section 4.6 News system configuration:
301 + /etc/news/organization and /etc/news/server should be supported
302 by all news servers and clients
304 - Updated section 4.7 Programs for the X Windows system:
305 + programs requiring a non-free Motif library should be provided
306 as foo-smotif and foo-dmotif package
307 + if lesstif works reliably for such program, it should be linked
308 against lesstif and not against a non-free Motif library
310 - Updated section 4.9 Games:
311 + games for X Windows have to be installed in /usr/games, just as
314 2.3.0.1, 2.3.0.0 Sep 97
316 * new section `4.2 Daemons' including rules for
317 /etc/services, /etc/protocols, /etc/rpc, and /etc/inetd.conf
319 * updated section about `Configuration files':
320 packages may not touch other packages' configuration files
322 * MUAs and MTAs have to use liblockfile
326 * added section 4.1 `Architecture specification strings':
329 where <arch> is one of the following:
330 i386, alpha, arm, m68k, powerpc, sparc.
332 * detailed rules for /usr/local
336 * editor/pager policy
342 * don't install shared libraries as executable
344 * app-defaults files may not be conffiles
346 2.1.3.2, 2.1.3.1, 2.1.3.0 Mar 97
348 * two programs with different functionality must not have the
353 * "Standard for Console Messages"
355 * Libraries should be compiled with `-D_REENTRANT'
357 * Libraries should be stripped with "strip --strip-unneeded"
359 2.1.2.2, 2.1.2.1, 2.1.2.0 Nov 96
361 * Some changes WRT shared libraries
365 * No hard links in source packages
367 * Do not use dpkg-divert or update-alternatives without consultation
369 * Shared libraries must be installed stripped
373 * Upstream changelog must be installed too
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