<em>ruby</em>, <em>science</em>, <em>shells</em>, <em>sound</em>,
<em>tex</em>, <em>text</em>, <em>utils</em>, <em>vcs</em>,
<em>video</em>, <em>web</em>, <em>x11</em>, <em>xfce</em>,
- <em>zope</em>.
+ <em>zope</em>. The additional section <em>debian-installer</em>
+ contains special packages used by the installer and is not used
+ for normal Debian packages.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ For more information about the sections and their definitions,
+ see the <url id="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/"
+ name="list of sections in unstable">.
</p>
</sect>
</p>
<p>
- The <var>date</var> must be in RFC822 format<footnote>
+ The <var>date</var> has the following format<footnote>
This is generated by <tt>date -R</tt>.
- </footnote>; it must include the time zone specified
- numerically, with the time zone name or abbreviation
- optionally present as a comment in parentheses.
+ </footnote> (compatible and with the same semantics of
+ RFC 2822 and RFC 5322):
+ <example>day-of-week, dd month yyyy hh:mm:ss +zzzz</example>
+ where:
+ <list compact="compact">
+ <item>day-of week is one of: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun</item>
+ <item>dd is a one- or two-digit day of the month (01-31)</item>
+ <item>month is one of: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec</item>
+ <item>yyyy is the four-digit year (e.g. 2010)</item>
+ <item>hh is the two-digit hour (00-23</item>
+ <item>mm is the two-digit minutes (00-59)</item>
+ <item>ss is the two-digit seconds (00-60)</item>
+ <item>
+ +zzzz or -zzzz is the the time zone offset from Coordinated Universal
+ Time (UTC). "+" indicates that the time is ahead of (i.e., east of) UTC
+ and "-" indicates that the time is behind (i.e., west of) UTC. The
+ first two digits indicate the hour difference from UTC and the last
+ two digits indicate the number of additional minutes difference from
+ UTC. The last two digits must be in the range 00-59.
+ </item>
+ </list>
</p>
<p>
<tt>Architecture</tt> field can include the following sets of
values:
<list>
- <item>A unique single word identifying a Debian machine
- architecture as described in <ref id="arch-spec">.
- <item><tt>all</tt>, which indicates an
- architecture-independent package.
- <item><tt>any</tt>, which indicates a package available
- for building on any architecture.
- <item><tt>source</tt>, which indicates a source package.
+ <item>
+ A unique single word identifying a Debian machine
+ architecture as described in <ref id="arch-spec">.
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ An architecture wildcard identifying a set of Debian
+ machine architectures, see <ref id="arch-wildcard-spec">.
+ <tt>any</tt> matches all Debian machine architectures
+ and is the most frequently used.
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <tt>all</tt>, which indicates an
+ architecture-independent package.
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <tt>source</tt>, which indicates a source package.
+ </item>
</list>
</p>
<p>
In the main <file>debian/control</file> file in the source
- package, this field may contain the special value
- <tt>any</tt>, the special value <tt>all</tt>, or a list of
- architectures separated by spaces. If <tt>any</tt> or
- <tt>all</tt> appear, they must be the entire contents of the
- field. Most packages will use either <tt>any</tt> or
- <tt>all</tt>. Specifying a specific list of architectures is
- for the minority of cases where a program is not portable or
- is not useful on some architectures, and where possible the
- program should be made portable instead.
+ package, this field may contain the special
+ value <tt>all</tt>, the special architecture
+ wildcard <tt>any</tt>, or a list of specific and wildcard
+ architectures separated by spaces. If <tt>all</tt>
+ or <tt>any</tt> appears, that value must be the entire
+ contents of the field. Most packages will use
+ either <tt>all</tt> or <tt>any</tt>.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ Specifying a specific list of architectures indicates that the
+ source will build an architecture-dependent package only on
+ architectures included in the list. Specifying a list of
+ architecture wildcards indicates that the source will build an
+ architecture-dependent package on only those architectures
+ that match any of the specified architecture wildcards.
+ Specifying a list of architectures or architecture wildcards
+ other than <tt>any</tt> is for the minority of cases where a
+ program is not portable or is not useful on some
+ architectures. Where possible, the program should be made
+ portable instead.
</p>
<p>
In the source package control file <file>.dsc</file>, this
- field may contain either the special value <tt>any</tt> or a
- list of architectures separated by spaces. If a list is given,
- it may include (or consist solely of) the special value
- <tt>all</tt>. In other words, in <file>.dsc</file> files
- unlike the <file>debian/control</file>, <tt>all</tt> may occur
- in combination with specific architectures. The
- <tt>Architecture</tt> field in the source package control file
- <file>.dsc</file> is generally constructed from the
- <tt>Architecture</tt> fields in the
- <file>debian/control</file> in the source package.
+ field may contain either the architecture
+ wildcard <tt>any</tt> or a list of architectures and
+ architecture wildcards separated by spaces. If a list is
+ given, it may include (or consist solely of) the special
+ value <tt>all</tt>. In other words, in <file>.dsc</file>
+ files unlike the <file>debian/control</file>, <tt>all</tt> may
+ occur in combination with specific architectures.
+ The <tt>Architecture</tt> field in the source package control
+ file <file>.dsc</file> is generally constructed from
+ the <tt>Architecture</tt> fields in
+ the <file>debian/control</file> in the source package.
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
- Specifying a list of architectures indicates that the source
- will build an architecture-dependent package, and will only
- work correctly on the listed architectures. If the source
- package also builds at least one architecture-independent
- package, <tt>all</tt> will also be included in the list.
+ Specifying a list of architectures or architecture wildcards
+ indicates that the source will build an architecture-dependent
+ package, and will only work correctly on the listed or
+ matching architectures. If the source package also builds at
+ least one architecture-independent package, <tt>all</tt> will
+ also be included in the list.
</p>
<p>
In a <file>.changes</file> file, the <tt>Architecture</tt>
- field lists the architecture(s) of the package(s)
- currently being uploaded. This will be a list; if the
- source for the package is also being uploaded, the special
+ field lists the architecture(s) of the package(s) currently
+ being uploaded. This will be a list; if the source for the
+ package is also being uploaded, the special
entry <tt>source</tt> is also present. <tt>all</tt> will be
present if any architecture-independent packages are being
- uploaded. <tt>any</tt> may never occur in the
- <tt>Architecture</tt> field in the <file>.changes</file>
- file.
+ uploaded. Architecture wildcards such as <tt>any</tt> must
+ never occur in the <tt>Architecture</tt> field in
+ the <file>.changes</file> file.
</p>
<p>
<em>not</em> intended to cope with version numbers containing
strings of letters which the package management system cannot
interpret (such as <tt>ALPHA</tt> or <tt>pre-</tt>), or with
- silly orderings (the author of this manual has heard of a
- package whose versions went <tt>1.1</tt>, <tt>1.2</tt>,
- <tt>1.3</tt>, <tt>1</tt>, <tt>2.1</tt>, <tt>2.2</tt>,
- <tt>2</tt> and so forth).
+ silly orderings.<footnote>
+ The author of this manual has heard of a package whose
+ versions went <tt>1.1</tt>, <tt>1.2</tt>, <tt>1.3</tt>,
+ <tt>1</tt>, <tt>2.1</tt>, <tt>2.2</tt>, <tt>2</tt> and so
+ forth.
+ </footnote>
</p>
</sect1>
<heading>Controlling terminal for maintainer scripts</heading>
<p>
- The maintainer scripts are guaranteed to run with a
- controlling terminal and can interact with the user.
- Because these scripts may be executed with standard output
- redirected into a pipe for logging purposes, Perl scripts
- should set unbuffered output by setting <tt>$|=1</tt> so
- that the output is printed immediately rather than being
- buffered.
+ Maintainer scripts are not guaranteed to run with a controlling
+ terminal and may not be able to interact with the user. They
+ must be able to fall back to noninteractive behavior if no
+ controlling terminal is available. Maintainer scripts that
+ prompt via a program conforming to the Debian Configuration
+ Management Specification (see <ref id="maintscriptprompt">) may
+ assume that program will handle falling back to noninteractive
+ behavior.
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ For high-priority prompts without a reasonable default answer,
+ maintainer scripts may abort if there is no controlling
+ terminal. However, this situation should be avoided if at all
+ possible, since it prevents automated or unattended installs.
+ In most cases, users will consider this to be a bug in the
+ package.
</p>
</sect>
+
<sect id="exitstatus">
<heading>Exit status</heading>
bar</tt> on all other architectures.
</p>
+ <p>
+ All fields that specify build-time relationships may also be
+ restricted to a certain set of architectures using architecture
+ wildcards. The syntax for declaring such restrictions is the
+ same as declaring restrictions using a certain set of
+ architectures without architecture wildcards. For example:
+ <example compact="compact">
+Build-Depends: foo [linux-any], bar [any-i386], baz [!linux-any]
+ </example>
+ is equivalent to <tt>foo</tt> on architectures using the Linux
+ kernel and any cpu, <tt>bar</tt> on architectures using any
+ kernel and an i386 cpu, and <tt>baz</tt> on any architecture
+ using a kernel other than Linux.
+ </p>
+
<p>
Note that the binary package relationship fields such as
<tt>Depends</tt> appear in one of the binary package
security policy by changing the permissions on a binary:
they can do this by using <prgn>dpkg-statoverride</prgn>, as
described below.<footnote>
- Ordinary files installed by <prgn>dpkg</prgn> (as
- opposed to <tt>conffile</tt>s and other similar objects)
- normally have their permissions reset to the distributed
- permissions when the package is reinstalled. However,
- the use of <prgn>dpkg-statoverride</prgn> overrides this
- default behavior. If you use this method, you should
- remember to describe <prgn>dpkg-statoverride</prgn> in
- the package documentation; being a relatively new
- addition to Debian, it is probably not yet well-known.
+ Ordinary files installed by <prgn>dpkg</prgn> (as
+ opposed to <tt>conffile</tt>s and other similar objects)
+ normally have their permissions reset to the distributed
+ permissions when the package is reinstalled. However,
+ the use of <prgn>dpkg-statoverride</prgn> overrides this
+ default behavior.
</footnote>
Another method you should consider is to create a group for
people allowed to use the program(s) and make any setuid
<p>
If a program needs to specify an <em>architecture specification
- string</em> in some place, it should select one of the
- strings provided by <tt>dpkg-architecture -L</tt>. The
- strings are in the format
- <tt><var>os</var>-<var>arch</var></tt>, though the OS part
- is sometimes elided, as when the OS is Linux.<footnote>
- <p>Currently, the strings are:
- i386 ia64 alpha amd64 armeb arm hppa m32r m68k mips
- mipsel powerpc ppc64 s390 s390x sh3 sh3eb sh4 sh4eb
- sparc darwin-i386 darwin-ia64 darwin-alpha darwin-amd64
- darwin-armeb darwin-arm darwin-hppa darwin-m32r
- darwin-m68k darwin-mips darwin-mipsel darwin-powerpc
- darwin-ppc64 darwin-s390 darwin-s390x darwin-sh3
- darwin-sh3eb darwin-sh4 darwin-sh4eb darwin-sparc
- freebsd-i386 freebsd-ia64 freebsd-alpha freebsd-amd64
- freebsd-armeb freebsd-arm freebsd-hppa freebsd-m32r
- freebsd-m68k freebsd-mips freebsd-mipsel freebsd-powerpc
- freebsd-ppc64 freebsd-s390 freebsd-s390x freebsd-sh3
- freebsd-sh3eb freebsd-sh4 freebsd-sh4eb freebsd-sparc
- kfreebsd-i386 kfreebsd-ia64 kfreebsd-alpha
- kfreebsd-amd64 kfreebsd-armeb kfreebsd-arm kfreebsd-hppa
- kfreebsd-m32r kfreebsd-m68k kfreebsd-mips
- kfreebsd-mipsel kfreebsd-powerpc kfreebsd-ppc64
- kfreebsd-s390 kfreebsd-s390x kfreebsd-sh3 kfreebsd-sh3eb
- kfreebsd-sh4 kfreebsd-sh4eb kfreebsd-sparc knetbsd-i386
- knetbsd-ia64 knetbsd-alpha knetbsd-amd64 knetbsd-armeb
- knetbsd-arm knetbsd-hppa knetbsd-m32r knetbsd-m68k
- knetbsd-mips knetbsd-mipsel knetbsd-powerpc
- knetbsd-ppc64 knetbsd-s390 knetbsd-s390x knetbsd-sh3
- knetbsd-sh3eb knetbsd-sh4 knetbsd-sh4eb knetbsd-sparc
- netbsd-i386 netbsd-ia64 netbsd-alpha netbsd-amd64
- netbsd-armeb netbsd-arm netbsd-hppa netbsd-m32r
- netbsd-m68k netbsd-mips netbsd-mipsel netbsd-powerpc
- netbsd-ppc64 netbsd-s390 netbsd-s390x netbsd-sh3
- netbsd-sh3eb netbsd-sh4 netbsd-sh4eb netbsd-sparc
- openbsd-i386 openbsd-ia64 openbsd-alpha openbsd-amd64
- openbsd-armeb openbsd-arm openbsd-hppa openbsd-m32r
- openbsd-m68k openbsd-mips openbsd-mipsel openbsd-powerpc
- openbsd-ppc64 openbsd-s390 openbsd-s390x openbsd-sh3
- openbsd-sh3eb openbsd-sh4 openbsd-sh4eb openbsd-sparc
- hurd-i386 hurd-ia64 hurd-alpha hurd-amd64 hurd-armeb
- hurd-arm hurd-hppa hurd-m32r hurd-m68k hurd-mips
- hurd-mipsel hurd-powerpc hurd-ppc64 hurd-s390 hurd-s390x
- hurd-sh3 hurd-sh3eb hurd-sh4 hurd-sh4eb hurd-sparc
- </p>
- </footnote>
+ string</em> in some place, it should select one of the strings
+ provided by <tt>dpkg-architecture -L</tt>. The strings are in
+ the format <tt><var>os</var>-<var>arch</var></tt>, though the OS
+ part is sometimes elided, as when the OS is Linux.
</p>
<p>
<tt><var>arch</var>-unknown-linux</tt>, since the
<tt>unknown</tt> does not look very good.
</p>
+
+ <sect1 id="arch-wildcard-spec">
+ <heading>Architecture wildcards</heading>
+
+ <p>
+ A package may specify an architecture wildcard. Architecture
+ wildcards are in the format <tt>any</tt> (which matches every
+ architecture), <tt><var>os</var></tt>-any, or
+ any-<tt><var>cpu</var></tt>. <footnote>
+ Internally, the package system normalizes the GNU triplets
+ and the Debian arches into Debian arch triplets (which are
+ kind of inverted GNU triplets), with the first component of
+ the triplet representing the libc and ABI in use, and then
+ does matching against those triplets. However, such
+ triplets are an internal implementation detail that should
+ not be used by packages directly. The libc and ABI portion
+ is handled internally by the package system based on
+ the <var>os</var> and <var>cpu</var>.
+ </footnote>
+ </p>
+ </sect1>
</sect>
<sect>
</p>
<p>
- The maintainer scripts are guaranteed to run with a
- controlling terminal and can interact with the user.
- See <ref id="controllingterminal">.
+ The maintainer scripts are not guaranteed to run with a
+ controlling terminal and may not be able to interact with
+ the user. See <ref id="controllingterminal">.
</p>
</item>
</p>
</sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="pkg-dpkgchangelog">
- <heading><file>debian/changelog</file></heading>
-
- <p>
- See <ref id="dpkgchangelog">.
- </p>
-
- <sect2><heading>Defining alternative changelog formats
- </heading>
-
- <p>
- It is possible to use a different format to the standard
- one, by providing a parser for the format you wish to
- use.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- In order to have <tt>dpkg-parsechangelog</tt> run your
- parser, you must include a line within the last 40 lines
- of your file matching the Perl regular expression:
- <tt>\schangelog-format:\s+([0-9a-z]+)\W</tt> The part in
- parentheses should be the name of the format. For
- example, you might say:
- <example>
- @@@ changelog-format: joebloggs @@@
- </example>
- Changelog format names are non-empty strings of alphanumerics.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- If such a line exists then <tt>dpkg-parsechangelog</tt>
- will look for the parser as
- <file>/usr/lib/dpkg/parsechangelog/<var>format-name</var></file>
- or
- <file>/usr/local/lib/dpkg/parsechangelog/<var>format-name</var></file>;
- it is an error for it not to find it, or for it not to
- be an executable program. The default changelog format
- is <tt>dpkg</tt>, and a parser for it is provided with
- the <tt>dpkg</tt> package.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- The parser will be invoked with the changelog open on
- standard input at the start of the file. It should read
- the file (it may seek if it wishes) to determine the
- information required and return the parsed information
- to standard output in the form of a series of control
- fields in the standard format. By default it should
- return information about only the most recent version in
- the changelog; it should accept a
- <tt>-v<var>version</var></tt> option to return changes
- information from all versions present <em>strictly
- after</em> <var>version</var>, and it should then be an
- error for <var>version</var> not to be present in the
- changelog.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- The fields are:
- <list compact="compact">
- <item><qref id="f-Source"><tt>Source</tt></qref></item>
- <item><qref id="f-Version"><tt>Version</tt></qref> (mandatory)</item>
- <item><qref id="f-Distribution"><tt>Distribution</tt></qref> (mandatory)</item>
- <item><qref id="f-Urgency"><tt>Urgency</tt></qref> (mandatory)</item>
- <item><qref id="f-Maintainer"><tt>Maintainer</tt></qref> (mandatory)</item>
- <item><qref id="f-Date"><tt>Date</tt></qref></item>
- <item><qref id="f-Changes"><tt>Changes</tt></qref> (mandatory)</item>
- </list>
- </p>
-
- <p>
- If several versions are being returned (due to the use
- of <tt>-v</tt>), the urgency value should be of the
- highest urgency code listed at the start of any of the
- versions requested followed by the concatenated
- (space-separated) comments from all the versions
- requested; the maintainer, version, distribution and
- date should always be from the most recent version.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- For the format of the <tt>Changes</tt> field see
- <ref id="f-Changes">.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- If the changelog format which is being parsed always or
- almost always leaves a blank line between individual
- change notes these blank lines should be stripped out,
- so as to make the resulting output compact.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- If the changelog format does not contain date or package
- name information this information should be omitted from
- the output. The parser should not attempt to synthesize
- it or find it from other sources.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- If the changelog does not have the expected format the
- parser should exit with a nonzero exit status, rather
- than trying to muddle through and possibly generating
- incorrect output.
- </p>
-
- <p>
- A changelog parser may not interact with the user at
- all.
- </p>
- </sect2>
- </sect1>
-
<sect1 id="pkg-srcsubstvars">
<heading><file>debian/substvars</file> and variable substitutions</heading>
projects / debian / debian-policy.git / blobdiff