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.
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