From: Charles Plessy
Each paragraph consists of a series of data fields; each field consists of the field name, followed by a colon and - then the data/value associated with that field. It ends at - the end of the (logical) line. Horizontal whitespace + then the data/value associated with that field. The field + name is composed of printable ASCII characters (i.e., + characters that have values between 33 and 126, inclusive) + except colon and must not with a begin with #. The + field ends at the end of the line or at the end of the + last continuation line (see below). Horizontal whitespace (spaces and tabs) may occur immediately before or after the value and is ignored there; it is conventional to put a single space after the colon. For example, a field might @@ -2509,21 +2516,51 @@ Package: libc6
- Many fields' values may span several lines; in this case
- each continuation line must start with a space or a tab.
- Any trailing spaces or tabs at the end of individual
- lines of a field value are ignored.
+ There are three types of fields:
+
- In fields where it is specified that lines may not wrap, - only a single line of data is allowed and whitespace is not - significant in a field body. Whitespace must not appear + Whitespace must not appear inside names (of packages, architectures, files or anything else) or version numbers, or between the characters of multi-character version relationships.
++ The presence and purpose of a field, and the syntax of its + value may differ between types of control files. +
+Field names are not case-sensitive, but it is usual to capitalize the field names using mixed case as shown below. @@ -2532,9 +2569,17 @@ Package: libc6
- Blank lines, or lines consisting only of spaces and tabs, - are not allowed within field values or between fields - that - would mean a new paragraph. + Paragraph separators (empty lines) and lines consisting only of + spaces and tabs are not allowed within field values or between + fields. Empty lines in field values are usually escaped by + representing them by a space followed by a dot. +
+ +
+ Lines starting with # without any preceding whitespace are comments
+ lines that are only permitted in source package control files
+ (
@@ -2600,8 +2645,8 @@ Package: libc6
- In addition to the control file syntax described
- Any parser that interprets the Uploaders field in
-
This is a boolean field which may occur only in the control file of a binary package or in a per-package fields - paragraph of a main source control data file. + paragraph of a source package control file.
@@ -3242,7 +3273,8 @@ Package: libc6 In a source or binary control file, the Description field contains a description of the binary package, consisting of two parts, the synopsis or the short description, and the - long description. The field's format is as follows: + long description. It is a multiline field with the following + format:
@@ -3306,8 +3338,8 @@ Package: libc6
field contains a summary of the descriptions for the packages
being uploaded. For this case, the first line of the field
value (the part on the same line as Description:) is
- always empty. The content of the field is expressed as
- continuation lines, one line per package. Each line is
+ always empty. It is a multiline field, with one
+ line per package. Each line is
indented by one space and contains the name of a binary
package, a space, a hyphen (-), a space, and the
short description line from that package.
@@ -3443,7 +3475,7 @@ Package: libc6
- This field contains the human-readable changes data, describing + This multiline field contains the human-readable changes data, describing the differences between the last version and the current one.
@@ -3481,7 +3513,7 @@ Package: libc6- This field is a list of binary packages. Its syntax and + This folded field is a list of binary packages. Its syntax and meaning varies depending on the control file in which it appears.
@@ -3491,7 +3523,7 @@ Package: libc6 packages which a source package can produce, separated by commas
When it appears in a
- These fields contain a list of files with a checksum and size
+ These multiline fields contain a list of files with a checksum and size
for each one. Both Checksums-Sha1
and Checksums-Sha256 have the same syntax and differ
only in the checksum algorithm used: SHA-1
@@ -4562,13 +4594,13 @@ fi
specification subject to the rules in , and must appear where it's necessary to
disambiguate; it is not otherwise significant. All of the
- relationship fields may span multiple lines. For
+ relationship fields can only be folded in source package control files. For
consistency and in case of future changes to