is used by, a significant number of packages, and
therefore should not be changed without peer
review. Package maintainers can then rely on this
- interfaces not changing, and the package
- management software authors need to ensure
- compatibility with these interface
- definitions. (Control file and changelog file
- formats are examples.)
+ interface not changing, and the package management
+ software authors need to ensure compatibility with
+ this interface definition. (Control file and
+ changelog file formats are examples.)
</item>
<tag>Chosen Convention</tag>
<item>
The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) form our
definition of "free software". These are:
<taglist>
- <tag>Free Redistribution
+ <tag>1. Free Redistribution
</tag>
<item>
The license of a Debian component may not restrict any
sources. The license may not require a royalty or
other fee for such sale.
</item>
- <tag>Source Code
+ <tag>2. Source Code
</tag>
<item>
The program must include source code, and must allow
distribution in source code as well as compiled form.
</item>
- <tag>Derived Works
+ <tag>3. Derived Works
</tag>
<item>
The license must allow modifications and derived
works, and must allow them to be distributed under the
same terms as the license of the original software.
</item>
- <tag>Integrity of The Author's Source Code
+ <tag>4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code
</tag>
<item>
The license may restrict source-code from being
Project encourages all authors to not restrict any
files, source or binary, from being modified.)
</item>
- <tag>No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
+ <tag>5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
</tag>
<item>
The license must not discriminate against any person
or group of persons.
</item>
- <tag>No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
+ <tag>6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
</tag>
<item>
The license must not restrict anyone from making use
used in a business, or from being used for genetic
research.
</item>
- <tag>Distribution of License
+ <tag>7. Distribution of License
</tag>
<item>
The rights attached to the program must apply to all
for execution of an additional license by those
parties.
</item>
- <tag>License Must Not Be Specific to Debian
+ <tag>8. License Must Not Be Specific to Debian
</tag>
<item>
The rights attached to the program must not depend on
rights as those that are granted in conjunction with
the Debian system.
</item>
- <tag>License Must Not Contaminate Other Software
+ <tag>9. License Must Not Contaminate Other Software
</tag>
<item>
The license must not place restrictions on other
that all other programs distributed on the same medium
must be free software.
</item>
- <tag>Example Licenses
+ <tag>10. Example Licenses
</tag>
<item>
The "GPL," "BSD," and "Artistic" licenses are examples of
its copyright and distribution license in the file
<file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/copyright</file>
(see <ref id="copyrightfile"> for further details). Also see
- <ref id="pkgcopyright"> for further considerations relayed
+ <ref id="pkgcopyright"> for further considerations related
to copyrights for packages.
</p>
</sect>
Since an interactive <file>debian/rules</file> script makes it
impossible to auto-compile that package and also makes it
hard for other people to reproduce the same binary
- package, all <em>required targets</em> MUST be
+ package, all <em>required targets</em> must be
non-interactive. At a minimum, required targets are the
ones called by <prgn>dpkg-buildpackage</prgn>, namely,
<em>clean</em>, <em>binary</em>, <em>binary-arch</em>,
<p>
Field names are not case-sensitive, but it is usual to
capitalize the field names using mixed case as shown below.
+ Field values are case-sensitive unless the description of the
+ field says otherwise.
</p>
<p>
<heading><tt>Priority</tt></heading>
<p>
- This field represents how important that it is that the user
+ This field represents how important it is that the user
have the package installed. See <ref id="priorities">.
</p>
</p>
<p>
- See <ref id="debianrules"> for information how to get the
- architecture for the build process.
+ See <ref id="debianrules"> for information on how to get
+ the architecture for the build process.
</p>
</sect1>
<p>
Thus only the first three components of the policy version
are significant in the <em>Standards-Version</em> control
- field, and so either these three components or the all
- four components may be specified.<footnote>
+ field, and so either these three components or all four
+ components may be specified.<footnote>
In the past, people specified the full version number
in the Standards-Version field, for example "2.3.0.0".
Since minor patch-level changes don't introduce new
for the most recent version should be returned first, and
entries should be separated by the representation of a
blank line (the "title" line may also be followed by the
- representation of blank line).
+ representation of a blank line).
</p>
</sect1>
<example compact="compact">
<var>old-preinst</var> abort-upgrade <var>new-version</var>
</example>
- If this fails, the old version is left in an
+ If this fails, the old version is left in a
"Half Installed" state. If it works, dpkg now
calls:
<example compact="compact">
<var>new-postrm</var> abort-upgrade <var>old-version</var>
</example>
- If this fails, the old version is left in an
+ If this fails, the old version is left in a
"Half Installed" state. If it works, dpkg now
calls:
<example compact="compact">
</p>
<p>
- If you are creating a udeb for use in the Debian Installer, you
- will need to specify that <prgn>dpkg-shlibdeps</prgn> should use
- the dependency line of type <tt>udeb</tt> by adding
- <tt>-tudeb</tt> as option<footnote>
+ If you are creating a udeb for use in the Debian Installer,
+ you will need to specify that <prgn>dpkg-shlibdeps</prgn>
+ should use the dependency line of type <tt>udeb</tt> by
+ adding the <tt>-tudeb</tt> option<footnote>
<prgn>dh_shlibdeps</prgn> from the <tt>debhelper</tt> suite
will automatically add this option if it knows it is
processing a udeb.
for 64 bit binaries is removed.
</p>
</item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ The requirement for object files, internal binaries, and
+ libraries, including <file>libc.so.*</file>, to be located
+ directly under <file>/lib{,32}</file> and
+ <file>/usr/lib{,32}</file> is amended, permitting files
+ to instead be installed to
+ <file>/lib/<var>triplet</var></file> and
+ <file>/usr/lib/<var>triplet</var></file>, where
+ <tt><var>triplet</var></tt> is the value returned by
+ <tt>dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE</tt> for the
+ architecture of the package. Packages may <em>not</em>
+ install files to any <var>triplet</var> path other
+ than the one matching the architecture of that package;
+ for instance, an <tt>Architecture: amd64</tt> package
+ containing 32-bit x86 libraries may not install these
+ libraries to <file>/usr/lib/i486-linux-gnu</file>.
+ <footnote>
+ This is necessary in order to reserve the directories for
+ use in cross-installation of library packages from other
+ architectures, as part of the planned deployment of
+ <tt>multiarch</tt>.
+ </footnote>
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Applications may also use a single subdirectory under
+ <file>/usr/lib/<var>triplet</var></file>.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The execution time linker/loader, ld*, must still be made
+ available in the existing location under /lib or /lib64
+ since this is part of the ELF ABI for the architecture.
+ </p>
+ </item>
<item>
<p>
The requirement that
</p>
<p>
- Note, that this applies only to directories <em>below</em>
- <file>/usr/local</file>, not <em>in</em> <file>/usr/local</file>.
- Packages must not create sub-directories in the directory
- <file>/usr/local</file> itself, except those listed in FHS,
- section 4.5. However, you may create directories below
- them as you wish. You must not remove any of the
- directories listed in 4.5, even if you created them.
+ Note that this applies only to
+ directories <em>below</em> <file>/usr/local</file>,
+ not <em>in</em> <file>/usr/local</file>. Packages must
+ not create sub-directories in the
+ directory <file>/usr/local</file> itself, except those
+ listed in FHS, section 4.5. However, you may create
+ directories below them as you wish. You must not remove
+ any of the directories listed in 4.5, even if you created
+ them.
</p>
<p>
<sect1>
<heading>The system-wide mail directory</heading>
<p>
- The system-wide mail directory is <file>/var/mail</file>. This
- directory is part of the base system and should not owned
- by any particular mail agents. The use of the old
+ The system-wide mail directory
+ is <file>/var/mail</file>. This directory is part of the
+ base system and should not be owned by any particular mail
+ agents. The use of the old
location <file>/var/spool/mail</file> is deprecated, even
though the spool may still be physically located there.
</p>
<heading>Device files</heading>
<p>
- Packages must not include device files in the package file
- tree.
+ Packages must not include device files or named pipes in the
+ package file tree.
</p>
<p>
<file>/dev/cu*</file> devices should be changed to use
<file>/dev/ttyS*</file>.
</p>
+
+ <p>
+ Named pipes needed by the package must be created in
+ the <prgn>postinst</prgn> script<footnote>
+ It's better to use <prgn>mkfifo</prgn> rather
+ than <prgn>mknod</prgn> to create named pipes so that
+ automated checks for packages incorrectly creating device
+ files with <prgn>mknod</prgn> won't have false positives.
+ </footnote> and removed in
+ the <prgn>prerm</prgn> or <prgn>postrm</prgn> script as
+ appropriate.
+ </p>
</sect>
<sect id="config-files">
use <file>/usr/bin/sensible-editor</file> and
<file>/usr/bin/sensible-pager</file> as the editor or pager
program respectively. These are two scripts provided in the
- Debian base system that check the EDITOR and PAGER variables
- and launch the appropriate program, and fall back to
- <file>/usr/bin/editor</file> and <file>/usr/bin/pager</file> if the
- variable is not set.
+ <package>sensible-utils</package> package that check the EDITOR
+ and PAGER variables and launch the appropriate program, and fall
+ back to <file>/usr/bin/editor</file>
+ and <file>/usr/bin/pager</file> if the variable is not set.
</p>
<p>
<p>
Customization of programs' X resources may also be
supported with the provision of a file with the same name
- as that of the package placed in the
- <file>/etc/X11/Xresources/</file> directory, which must
- registered as a <tt>conffile</tt> or handled as a
+ as that of the package placed in
+ the <file>/etc/X11/Xresources/</file> directory, which
+ must be registered as a <tt>conffile</tt> or handled as a
configuration file.<footnote>
Note that this mechanism is not the same as using
app-defaults; app-defaults are tied to the client