1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
4 <!-- -*- Mode: Sgml -*-
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]
61 - Included a new section 11.9.1 describing the use of
62 dpkg-statoverride; this does not have the weight of policy
67 - The system-wide mail directory is now /var/mail, no longer
68 /var/spool/mail. Any packages accessing the mail spool should
69 access it via /var/mail and include a suitable Depends field;
71 - The perl policy is now part of Debian policy proper. Perl
72 programs and modules should follow the current Perl policy
78 - Build-Depends arch syntax has been changed to be less
79 ambiguous. This should not affect any current packages [7.1]
80 - Examples and templates files for use by scripts should now live
81 in /usr/share/<package> or /usr/lib/<package>, with
82 symbolic links from /usr/share/doc//<package>/examples as
88 - X app-defaults directory has moved from
89 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults to /etc/X11/app-defaults [12.8]
94 - dpkg-shlibdeps now uses objdump, so shared libraries have to be
95 run through dpkg-shlibdeps as well as executables [9.1]
100 - Font packages for the X Window System must now declare a
101 dependency on xutils (>= 4.0.2) [12.8]
106 - Daemon startup scripts in /etc/init.d/ should not contain
107 modifiable parameters; these should be moved to a file in
108 /etc/default/; see [10.3.2] for details
109 - Files in /usr/share/doc must not be referenced by any
110 program. If such files are needed, they must be placed in
111 /usr/share/<package>/, and symbolic links created as required
112 in /usr/share/doc/<package>/ [13.3]
113 - Much of the packaging manual has now been imported into the
119 - A package of priority standard or higher may provide two
120 binaries, one compiled with support for the X Window System,
121 and the other without [12.8]
126 - By default executables should not be built with the debugging
127 option -g. Instead, it is recommended to support building the
128 package with debugging information optionally. Details in [11.1]
129 - Policy for packages where the upstream uses HTML changelog
130 files has been expanded. In short, a plain text changelog file
131 should always be generated for the upstream changes [13.8]
132 - Please note that the new release of the X window system (4.x)
133 shall probably need sweeping changes in policy
134 - Policy for packages providing the following X-based features
135 has been codified [12.8]:
136 - X server (virtual package xserver)
137 - X terminal emulator (virtual package x-terminal-emulator)
138 - X window manager (virtual package x-window-manager, and
139 /usr/bin/x-window-manager alternative, with priority
140 calculation guidelines)
141 - X fonts (this section has been written from scratch)
142 - X application defaults
143 - Policy for packages using the X Window System and FHS issues
144 has been clarified; see [12.8]
145 - No package may contain or make hard links to conffiles [11.7.3]
146 - Noted that newer dpkg versions do not require extreme care in
147 always creating the shared lib before the symlink, so the unpack
153 - Correction to semantics of architecture lists in Build-Depends
154 etc. Should not affect many packages [7.1]
159 - /usr/doc/<package> has to be a symlink pointing to
160 /usr/share/doc/<package>, to be maintained by postinst
161 and prerm scripts. Details are in [13.4]
162 - Introduced source dependencies (Build-Depends, etc.) [7.1, 7.6]
163 - /etc/rc.boot has been deprecated in favour of /etc/rcS.d.
164 (Packages should not be touching this directory, but should use
165 update-rc.d instead) [10.3.4]
166 - update-rc.d is now the *only* allowable way of accessing the
167 /etc/rc?.d/[SK]??* links. Any scripts which manipulate them
168 directly must be changed to use update-rc.d instead. (This is
169 because the file-rc package handles this information in an
170 incompatible way.) [10.3.3]
171 - Architecture-specific examples go in /usr/lib/<package>/examples
172 with symlinks from /usr/share/doc/<package>/examples/* or from
173 /usr/share/doc/<package>/examples itself [13.7]
174 - Updated FHS to a 2.1 draft; this reverts /var/state to
176 - Added MIME sub-policy document [10.7; mime-policy]
177 - VISUAL is allowed as a (higher priority) alternative to EDITOR [12.4]
178 - Modified liblockfile description, which affects
179 mailbox-accessing programs. Please see the policy document for
181 - If a package provides a changelog in HTML format, a text-only
182 version should also be included. (Such a version may be prepared
183 using lynx -dump -nolist.) [13.8]
184 - Description of how to handle version numbers based on dates
190 - Added the clarification that the .la files are essential for the
191 packages using libtool's libltdl library, in which case the
192 .la files must go in the run-time library package [11.2]
197 - Debian formally moves from the FSSTND to the FHS. This is a
198 major change, and the implications of this move are probably
199 not all known. [10.1]
200 - Only 3 digits of the Standards version need be included in
201 control files, though all four digits are still permitted. [2.4.1]
202 - The location of the GPL has changed to
203 /usr/share/common-licenses. This may require changing the
204 copyright files to point to the correct location of the GPL and
205 other major licenses [13.6]
206 - Packages that use libtool to create shared libraries must
207 include the .la files in the -dev packages [11.2]
208 - Use logrotate to rotate log files [11.8]
209 - section 5.8 has been rewritten (Programs for the X Window
211 - There is now an associated menu policy, in a separate document,
212 that carries the full weight of Debian policy [10.6; menu-policy]
213 - Programs which need to modify the files /var/run/utmp,
214 /var/log/wtmp and /var/log/lastlog must be installed setgid utmp [12.3]
220 - Rearranged the manual to create a new Section 4, Files
221 + Section 3.3 ("Files") was moved to Section 4. The Sections
222 that were Section 4 and Section 5 were moved down to become
223 Section 5 and Section 6.
224 + What was Section 5.5 ("Log files") is now a subsection of the
225 new Section 4 ("Files"), becoming section 4.8, placed after
226 "Configuration files", moving the Section 4.8 ("Permissions
227 and owners") to Section 4.9. All subsections of the old
228 Section 5 after 5.5 were moved down to fill in the number
230 - Modified the section about changelog files to accommodate
231 upstream changelogs which were formatted as HTML/ These
232 upstream changelog files should now be accessible as
233 /usr/doc/package/changelog.html.gz
234 + Symlinks are permissible to link the real, or upstream,
235 changelog name to the Debian mandated name.
236 - Clarified that HTML documentation should be present in some
237 package, though not necessarily the main binary package.
238 - Corrected all references to the location of the copyright
239 files. The correct location is /usr/doc/package/copyright
240 - Ratified the architecture specification strings to cater to the
246 - Updated section 3.3.5 Symbolic links:
247 + symbolic links within a toplevel directory should be relative,
248 symbolic links between toplevel directories should be absolute
249 (cf., Policy Weekly Issue#6, topic 2)
251 - Updated section 4.9 Games:
252 + manpages for games should be installed in /usr/man/man6
253 (cf., Policy Weekly Issue#6, topic 3)
256 - Updated prefix of chapter 12, Shared Libraries:
257 ldconfig must be called in the postinst script if the package
258 installs shared libraries
259 (cf., Policy Weekly Issue #6, fixes:bug#20515)
263 - Updated section 3.3.4 Scripts:
264 + /bin/sh may be any POSIX compatible shell
265 + scripts including bashisms have to specify /bin/bash as
267 + scripts which create files in world-writable directories
268 (e.g., in /tmp) should use tempfile or mktemp for creating
271 - Updated section 3.3.5 Symbolic Links:
272 + symbolic links referencing compressed files must have the same
273 file extension as the referenced file
275 - Updated section 3.3.6 Device files:
276 + /dev/tty* serial devices should be used instead of /dev/cu*
278 - Updated section 3.4.2 Writing the scripts [in /etc/init.d]:
279 + all /etc/init.d scripts have to provide the following options:
280 start, stop, restart, force-reload
281 + the reload option is optional and must never stop and restart
284 - Updated section 3.5 Cron jobs:
285 + cron jobs that need to be executed more often than daily should
286 be installed into /etc/cron.d
288 - Updated section 3.7 Menus:
289 + removed section about how to register HTML docs to `menu'
290 (the corresponding section in 4.4, Web servers and applications,
291 has been removed in policy 2.2.0.0 already, so this one was
294 - New section 3.8 Keyboard configuration:
295 + details about how the backspace and delete keys should be
298 - New section 3.9 Environment variables:
299 + no program must depend on environment variables to get a
300 reasonable default configuration
302 - New section 4.6 News system configuration:
303 + /etc/news/organization and /etc/news/server should be supported
304 by all news servers and clients
306 - Updated section 4.7 Programs for the X Windows system:
307 + programs requiring a non-free Motif library should be provided
308 as foo-smotif and foo-dmotif package
309 + if lesstif works reliably for such program, it should be linked
310 against lesstif and not against a non-free Motif library
312 - Updated section 4.9 Games:
313 + games for X Windows have to be installed in /usr/games, just as
316 2.3.0.1, 2.3.0.0 Sep 97
318 * new section `4.2 Daemons' including rules for
319 /etc/services, /etc/protocols, /etc/rpc, and /etc/inetd.conf
321 * updated section about `Configuration files':
322 packages may not touch other packages' configuration files
324 * MUAs and MTAs have to use liblockfile
328 * added section 4.1 `Architecture specification strings':
331 where <arch> is one of the following:
332 i386, alpha, arm, m68k, powerpc, sparc.
334 * detailed rules for /usr/local
338 * editor/pager policy
344 * don't install shared libraries as executable
346 * app-defaults files may not be conffiles
348 2.1.3.2, 2.1.3.1, 2.1.3.0 Mar 97
350 * two programs with different functionality must not have the
355 * "Standard for Console Messages"
357 * Libraries should be compiled with `-D_REENTRANT'
359 * Libraries should be stripped with "strip --strip-unneeded"
361 2.1.2.2, 2.1.2.1, 2.1.2.0 Nov 96
363 * Some changes WRT shared libraries
367 * No hard links in source packages
369 * Do not use dpkg-divert or update-alternatives without consultation
371 * Shared libraries must be installed stripped
375 * Upstream changelog must be installed too
383 <!-- Keep this comment at the end of the file
387 sgml-live-element-indicator: t