The checklist below has been created to simplify the upgrading process of old packages. Note, that this list is not `official.' If you have doubts about a certain topic, if you need more details, or if you think some other package does not comply with policy, please refer to the Policy Manual.
Here is how the check list works: Check out which policy version your packages complies with currently. Than move upwards until the top and check which of the items on the list might concern your package. If an item does not give you enough details, please check out the Policy Manual.
3.5.4.0 Apr 01 Policy Manual: - The system-wide mail directory is /var/mail. All access to the mail spool should be via the /var/mail directory or symbolic link. To maintain partial upgrade compatibility for systems which have /var/spool/mail as their physical mail spool, packages using /var/mail must depend on either libc6 (>= 2.1.3-13), or on base-files (>= 2.2.0), or on later versions of either one of these packages. - The perl policy is now part of Debian policy proper. Perl programs and modules should follow the current Perl policy. 3.5.3.0 Apr 01 Policy Manual: - Build-Depends arch syntax has been changed to be less ambiguous. This should not affect any current packages - Examples and templates should now live in /usr/share/<package> or /usr/lib/<package>, with symbolic links from /usr/share/doc//<package>/examples as needed. 3.5.2.0 Feb 01 Policy Manual: - X app-defaults directory has moved from /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults to /etc/X11/app-defaults. 3.5.1.0 Feb 01 Policy Manual: - dpkg-shlibdeps now uses objdump, so shared libraries have to be run through dpkg-shlibdeps as well as executables 3.5.0.0 Jan 01 Policy Manual: - If your package had fonts for the X Window System, and you converted BDF to PCF formats, the bdftopcf utility has moved to the xutils package. - Font packages for the X Window System must now declare a dependency on xutils >= 4.0.2 3.2.1.1 Jan 01 Policy Manual: - If your package has a daemon startup script in /etc/init.d/, and that script has parameters a system administrator may need, you need to modify the script to read values from a conffile placed in /etc/default/ directory. This conffile maybe sourced by the init.d script to determine the sonfigurable values (and the conffile may contain only variable settings and comments). - Files in /usr/share/doc may not be referenced by any program. If such files are needed, they must be placed in /usr/share/package-name/, and symbolic links created as required in /usr/share/doc/package-name/ - Much of the packaging manual has now been imported into the policy document 3.2.1.0 Aug 00 Policy Manual: - A package of priority standard or higher may provide two binaries, one compiled with support for the X Window System, and the other without. 3.2.0.0 Aug 00 Policy Manual: - By default executables should not be built with the debugging option -g. Instead, it is recommended to support building the package with debugging information optionally. Please look at the examples using DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS in the policy manual. - Policy for packages where the upstream uses html changelog files has been expanded. In short, a plain text changelog file should always be generated for the upstream changes. - Please note that the new release of the X window system (4.x) shall probably need sweeping changes in policy. - Policy for packages providing an X server has been codified (formalizes existing practice - use virtual package xserver) - Policy for packages providing an X terminal emulator has been codified (use virtual package x-terminal-emulator) - Policy for packages providing an X window manager has been codified (use virtual package x-window-manager, and also as an alternative for /usr/bin/x-window-manager. The policy has guidelines on how to calculate priority) - Policy for packages providing an X fonts has been codified. Please look into the manual for details; this section has been written from scratch. - Policy for packages using the X Window System and FHS issues has been clarified. Please read the manual for details. - Policy for packages providing an X application default has been clarified. - No package may contain or make hard links to conffiles. Packaging Manual: - Noted that newer dpkg versions do not require extreme care in always creating the shared lib before the symlink, so the unpack order be correct. 3.1.1.0 Nov 99 Packaging Manual: - Correction to semantics of architecture lists in Build-Depends etc. Should not affect many packages. 3.1.0.0 Oct 99 Policy Manual: - /usr/doc/<package> has to be a symlink pointing to /usr/share/doc/<package>. This symlink has to be maintained by postinst and prerm, because dpkg will cause problems otherwise. Create/remote the symlinks using debhelper or see section "6.4. Accessing the documentation" for more information. - Introduced source dependencies (Build-Depends, etc.). (Whereas this ought to demand a major policy number rise, we've only just had one of them, so I'm going to use a minor number instead.) - /etc/rc.boot has been deprecated in favour of /etc/rcS.d. Packages should not be touching this directory, anyway, but should use update-rc.d instead. - update-rc.d is now the *only* allowable way of accessing the /etc/rc?.d/[SK]??* links. Any scripts which manipulate them directly must be changed to use update-rc.d instead. (This is because the file-rc package handles this information in an incompatible way.) - Compiled examples go in /usr/lib/<package>/examples with symlinks from /usr/share/doc/<package>/examples/* or from /usr/share/doc/<package>/examples itself. - Updated FHS to a 2.1 draft; this reverts /var/state to /var/lib. - Added MIME sub-policy document. - VISUAL is allowed as a (higher priority) alternative to EDITOR. - Modified liblockfile description, which affects mailbox-accessing programs. Please see the policy document for details. - If a package provides a changelog in HTML format, a text-only version should also be included. Such a version may be prepared using lynx -dump -nolist.) Packaging Manual: - Description of how to handle version numbers based on dates added: see section 5.1. 3.0.1.0 Jul 99 Policy Manual: - Added the clarification that the .la files are essential for the packages using libtool's libltdl library, in which case the .la files must go in the run-time library package. 3.0.0.0 Jun 99 Policy Manual: - Debian formally moves from the FSSTND to the FHS. This is a major change, and the implications of this move are probably not all known. - Only 3 digits of the Standards version need be included in control files, though all four digits are still permitted. - The location of the GPL has changed to /usr/share/common-licenses. This may require changing the copyright files to point to the correct location of the GPL and other major licenses - Packages that use libtool to create shared libraries must include the .la files in the -dev packages. - Use logrotate to rotate log files - section 5.8 has been rewritten (Programs for the X Window System) - There is now anassociated menu policy, in a separate document, that carries the full weight of Debian policy. - The files `/var/run/utmp', `/var/log/wtmp' and `/var/log/lastlog' must be installed writeable by group utmp. Programs who need to modify those files must be installed install setgid utmp. 2.5.0.0 Oct 98 Policy Manual: - Rearranged the manual to create a new Section 4, Files + Section 3.3 ("Files") was moved to Section 4. The Sections that were Section 4 and Section 5 were moved down to become Section 5 and Section 6. + What was Section 5.5 ("Log files") is now a subsection of the new Section 4 ("Files"), becoming section 4.8, placed after "Configuration files", moving the Section 4.8 ("Permissions and owners") to Section 4.9. All subsections of the old Section 5 after 5.5 were moved down to fill in the number gap. - Modified the section about changelog files to accommodate upstream changelogs which were formatted as HTML/ These upstream changelog files should now be accessible as /usr/doc/package/changelog.html.gz + Symlinks are permissible to link the real, or upstream, changelog name to the Debian mandated name. - Clarified that HTML documentation should be present in some package, though not necessarily the main binary package. - Corrected all references to the location of the copyright files. The correct location is /usr/doc/package/copyright - Ratified the architecture specification strings to cater to the HURD. 2.4.1.0 Apr 98 Policy Manual: - Updated section 3.3.5 Symbolic links: + symbolic links within a toplevel directory should be relative, symbolic links between toplevel directories should be absolute (cf., Policy Weekly Issue#6, topic 2) - Updated section 4.9 Games: + manpages for games should be installed in /usr/man/man6 (cf., Policy Weekly Issue#6, topic 3) Packaging Manual: - Updated prefix of chapter 12, Shared Libraries: ldconfig must be called in the postinst script if the package installs shared libraries (cf., Policy Weekly Issue #6, fixes:bug#20515) 2.4.0.0 Jan 98 - Updated section 3.3.4 Scripts: + /bin/sh may be any POSIX compatible shell + scripts including bashisms have to specify /bin/bash as interpreter + scripts which create files in world-writable directories (e.g., in /tmp) should use tempfile or mktemp for creating the directory - Updated section 3.3.5 Symbolic Links: + symbolic links referencing compressed files must have the same file extension as the referenced file - Updated section 3.3.6 Device files: + /dev/tty* serial devices should be used instead of /dev/cu* - Updated section 3.4.2 Writing the scripts [in /etc/init.d]: + all /etc/init.d scripts have to provide the following options: start, stop, restart, force-reload + the reload option is optional and must never stop and restart the service - Updated section 3.5 Cron jobs: + cron jobs that need to be executed more often than daily should be installed into /etc/cron.d - Updated section 3.7 Menus: + removed section about how to register HTML docs to `menu' (the corresponding section in 4.4, Web servers and applications, has been removed in policy 2.2.0.0 already, so this one was obsolete) - New section 3.8 Keyboard configuration: + details about how the backspace and delete keys should be handled - New section 3.9 Environment variables: + no program must depend on environment variables to get a reasonable default configuration - New section 4.6 News system configuration: + /etc/news/organization and /etc/news/server should be supported by all news servers and clients - Updated section 4.7 Programs for the X Windows system: + programs requiring a non-free Motif library should be provided as foo-smotif and foo-dmotif package + if lesstif works reliably for such program, it should be linked against lesstif and not against a non-free Motif library - Updated section 4.9 Games: + games for X Windows have to be installed in /usr/games, just as non-X games 2.3.0.1, 2.3.0.0 Sep 97 * new section `4.2 Daemons' including rules for /etc/services, /etc/protocols, /etc/rpc, and /etc/inetd.conf * updated section about `Configuration files': packages may not touch other packages' configuration files * MUAs and MTAs have to use liblockfile 2.2.0.0 Jul 97 * added section 4.1 `Architecture specification strings': use <arch>-linux where <arch> is one of the following: i386, alpha, arm, m68k, powerpc, sparc. * detailed rules for /usr/local * user ID's * editor/pager policy * cron jobs * device files * don't install shared libraries as executable * app-defaults files may not be conffiles 2.1.3.2, 2.1.3.1, 2.1.3.0 Mar 97 * two programs with different functionality must not have the same name * "Webstandard 3.0" * "Standard for Console Messages" * Libraries should be compiled with `-D_REENTRANT' * Libraries should be stripped with "strip --strip-unneeded" 2.1.2.2, 2.1.2.1, 2.1.2.0 Nov 96 * Some changes WRT shared libraries 2.1.1.0 Sep 96 * No hard links in source packages * Do not use dpkg-divert or update-alternatives without consultation * Shared libraries must be installed stripped 2.1.0.0 Aug 96 * Upstream changelog must be installed too