Table of Contents
The checklist below has been created to simplify the upgrading process of old packages. This list is not official or normative. It only provides an indication of what has changed and whether you are likely to need to make changes to your package in light of this. 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 itself.
All of the changes from version 3.0.0 onwards indicate which section of the Policy Manual discusses the issue. The section numbering should still be accurate for changes back to the 2.5.0 release. Before that point, the sections listed here probably no longer correspond to sections in the modern Policy Manual.
Here is how the check list works: Check which policy version your
package was checked against last (indicated in the
Standards-Version
field of the source package).
Then move upwards until the top and check which of the items on the
list might concern your package. Note which sections of policy
discuss this, and then check out the Policy Manual for details.
Once you've made all necessary changes to match the current rules,
update the value of Standards-Version
to the
current Policy Manual version.
The sections in this checklist match the values for the
Standards-Version
control field in omitting the
minor patch version, except in the two anomalous historical cases
where normative requirements were changed in a minor patch release.
Released May, 2017.
config.sub and
config.guess should be updated at build
time or replaced with the versions from autotools-dev
.
New TARGET
set of
dpkg-architecture variables and new
DEB_*_ARCH_BITS
and
DEB_*_ARCH_ENDIAN
variables.
New DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS
tag,
nodoc
, which says to suppress documentation
generation (but continue to build all binary packages, even
documentation packages, just let them be mostly empty).
Automatically-generated debug packages do not need to have a
corresponding paragraph in
debian/control
. (This is existing
practice; this Policy update is just clearer about it.)
Colons are not permitted in upstream version numbers.
New Build-Depends-Arch
and
Build-Conflicts-Arch
fields are now
supported.
The recommended package name for shared library development
files is now libraryname
-dev or
libraryname
apiversion
-dev,
not
libraryname
soversion
-dev.
The stable release of Debian supports
/run
, so packages may now assume that it
exists and do not need any special dependency on a version of
initscripts.
New optional try-restart
standard init
script argument, which (if supported) should restart the
service if it is already running and otherwise just report
success.
Support for the status
init script argument
is recommended.
Packages must not call /etc/init.d
scripts directly even as a fallback, and instead must always
use invoke-rc.d (which is essential and
shouldn't require any conditional).
Instructions for upstart integration removed since upstart is no longer maintained in Debian.
Packages may not install files in both
/
and
path
/usr/
, and
must manage any backward-compatibility symlinks so that they
don't break if
path
/
and
path
/usr/
are
the same directory.
path
Packages should assume device files in
/dev
are dynamically managed and don't
have to be created by the package. Packages other than those
whose purpose is to manage /dev
must not
create or remove files there when a dynamic management
facility is in use. Named pipes and device files outside of
/dev
should normally be created on demand
via init scripts, systemd units, or similar mechanisms, but
may be created and removed in maintainer scripts if they must
be created during package installation.
Checking with the base-passwd maintainer is no longer required (or desirable) when creating a new dynamic user or group in a package.
Dependencies on *-doc packages should be at most Recommends (Suggests if they only include documentation in supplemental formats).
The Mozilla Public License 1.1 and 2.0 (MPL-1.1 and MPL-2.0)
are now included in
/usr/share/common-licenses
and do not
need to be copied verbatim in the package
copyright
file.
The https
form of the copyright-format URL
is now allowed and preferred in the Format
field.
The Perl search path now includes multiarch directories. The vendor directory for architecture-specific modules is now versioned to support multiarch.
New adventure
virtual package for
implementations of the classic Colossal Cave Adventure game.
New httpd-wsgi3
virtual package for Python
3 WSGI-capable HTTP servers. The existing
httpd-wsgi
virtual package is for Python 2
WSGI-capable HTTP servers.
New virtual-mysql-client
,
virtual-mysql-client-core
,
virtual-mysql-server
,
virtual-mysql-server-core
, and
virtual-mysql-testsuite
virtual packages
for MySQL-compatible software.
Released April, 2016.
The menu system is deprecated in favor of the FreeDesktop menu standard. New requirements set for FreeDesktop menu entries.
New instructions for registering media type handlers with the FreeDesktop system, which automatically synchronizes with mailcap and therefore replaces mailcap registration for packages using desktop entries.
Released February, 2016.
Symbolic links must not traverse above the root directory.
32bit UIDs in the range 65536-4294967293 are reserved for dynamically allocated user accounts.
Empty field values in control files are only permitted in the
debian/control
file of a source package.
debian/rules
: required targets must not
attempt network access.
recommend to ship additional documentation for package
pkg in a separate package
pkg-doc and install it into
/usr/share/doc/pkg
.
Released September, 2014.
The FHS is relaxed to allow a subdirectory of
/usr/lib
to hold a mixture of
architecture-independent and architecture-dependent files,
though directories entirely composed of
architecture-independent files should be located in
/usr/share
.
The FHS requirement for /usr/local/lib64
to exist if /lib64
or
/usr/lib64
exists is removed.
An FHS exception has been granted for multiarch include files,
permitting header files to instead be installed to
/usr/include/triplet
.
Binaries must not be statically linked with the GNU C library, see policy for exceptions.
It is clarified that signature appearing in debian/changelog should be the details of the person who prepared this release of the package.
The default web document root is now
/var/www/html
java1-runtime
and
java2-runtime
are removed,
javaN-runtime
and
javaN-runtime-headless
are added for all N
between 5 and 9.
Added httpd-wsgi
for WSGI capable HTTP
servers.
Perl packages should use the %Config
hash
to locate module paths instead of hardcoding paths in
@INC
.
Perl binary modules and any modules installed into
$Config{vendorarch}
must depend on the
relevant perlapi-*
package.
Released October, 2013.
Control data fields must not start with the hyphen character
(-
), to avoid potential confusions when
parsing clearsigned control data files that were not properly
unescaped.
Checksums-Sha1
and
Checksums-Sha256
are now mandatory in
.dsc
files.
The DM-Upload-Allowed
field is obsolete.
Permissions are now granted via
dak-commands files.
New section documenting the Package-List
field in Debian source control files.
New section documenting the Package-Type
field in source package control files.
New section documenting the Dgit
field in
Debian source control files.
The exception to the FHS for the /selinux
was removed.
Packages should remove all obsolete configuration files
without local changes during upgrades. The
dpkg-maintscript-helper tool, available
from the dpkg
package
since Wheezy, can help with this.
The name of the files and directories installed by binary packages must be encoded in UTF-8 and should be restricted to ASCII when possible. In the system PATH, they must be restricted to ASCII.
Stop recommending to serve HTML documents from
/usr/share/doc/
.
package
Packages distributing Info documents should use install-info
's trigger, and do not
need anymore to depend on dpkg (>= 1.15.4) |
install-info
.
The escape
capability is now documented.
mp3-decoder
and
mp3-encoder
are removed.
Released August, 2012.
New tasks archive section.
build-arch
and
build-indep
are now mandatory targets in
debian/rules
.
New section documenting the Vcs-*
fields,
which are already in widespread use. Note the mechanism for
specifying the Git branch used for packaging in the Vcs-Git
field.
The deprecated relations < and > now must not be used.
New Built-Using
field, which must be used
to document the source packages for any binaries that are
incorporated into this package at build time. This is used to
ensure that the archive meets license requirements for
providing source for all binaries.
Policy for dependencies between shared libraries and other
packages has been largely rewritten to document the
symbols
system and more clearly document
handling of shared library ABI changes.
symbols
files are now recommended over
shlibs
files in most situations. All
maintainers of shared library packages should review the
entirety of this section.
Packages must not assume the /run
directory exists or is usable without a dependency on
initscripts (>= 2.88dsf-13.3)
until the
stable release of Debian supports /run
.
Packages including MIME configuration can now rely on triggers and do not need to call update-mime.
New section documenting general requirements for alternate init systems and specific requirements for integrating with upstart.
All copyright files must be encoded in UTF-8.
Released February, 2012.
New archive sections education, introspection, and metapackages added.
The Architecture
field in
*.dsc
files may now contain the value
any all
for source packages building both
architecture-independent and architecture-dependent packages.
If a dependency is restricted to particular architectures, the list of architectures must be non-empty.
/run
is allowed as an exception to the
FHS and replaces /var/run
.
/run/lock
replaces
/var/lock
. The FHS requirements for the
older directories apply to these directories as well.
Backward compatibility links will be maintained and packages
need not switch to referencing /run
directly yet. Files in /run
should be
stored in a temporary file system.
New section spelling out the requirements for packages that
use files in /run
,
/var/run
, or
/var/lock
. This generalizes information
previously only in 9.3.2.
Cron job file names must not contain .
or
+
or they will be ignored by cron. They
should replace those characters with _
. If
a package provides multiple cron job files in the same
directory, they should each start with the package name
(possibly modified as above), -
, and then
some suitable suffix.
Packages using doc-base do not need to call install-docs anymore.
Packages that declare the same conffile
may
see left-over configuration files from each other even if they
conflict.
The Policy rules around Motif libraries were just a special case of normal rules for non-free dependencies and were largely obsolete, so they have been removed.
debian/copyright
is no longer required to
list the Debian maintainers involved in the creation of the
package (although note that the requirement to list copyright
information is unchanged).
Version 1.0 of the "Machine-readable
debian/copyright
file" specification is
included.
This separate document has been retired and and its (short) contents merged into Policy section 9.7. There are no changes to the requirements.
Packages may declare an interest in the
perl-major-upgrade
trigger to be
notified of major upgrades of perl.
ttf-japanese-{mincho, gothic}
is renamed to
fonts-japanese-{mincho, gothic}
.
Released April, 2011.
Multiple clarifications throughout Policy where "installed" was used and the more precise terms "unpacked" or "configured" were intended.
The maintainer address must accept mail from Debian role
accounts and the BTS. At least one human must be listed with
their personal email address in Uploaders
if the maintainer is a shared email address. The duties of a
maintainer are also clearer.
All control fields are now classified as simple, folded, or multiline, which governs whether their values must be a single line or may be continued across multiple lines and whether line breaks are significant.
Parsers are allowed to accept paragraph separation lines containing whitespace, but control files should use completely empty lines. Ordering of paragraphs is significant. Field names must be composed of printable ASCII characters except colon and must not begin with #.
The DM-Upload-Allowed
field is now
documented.
The system state maintainer scripts can rely upon during each possible invocation is now documented. In several less-common cases, this is stricter than Policy had previously documented. Packages with complex maintainer scripts should be reviewed in light of this new documentation.
The impact on system state when maintainer scripts that are part of a circular dependency are run is now documented. Circular dependencies are now a should not.
The system state when postinst and prerm scripts are run is now documented, and the documentation of the special case of dependency state for postrm scripts has been improved. postrm scripts are required to gracefully skip actions if their dependencies are not available.
GNU/Hurd systems are allowed /hurd
and
/servers
directories in the root
filesystem.
Packages installing to architecture-specific subdirectories of
/usr/lib
must use the value returned by
dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_MULTIARCH, not
by dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE;
this is a path change on i386 architectures and a no-op for
other architectures.
mailx
is now a virtual package provided by
packages that install /usr/bin/mailx and
implement at least the POSIX-required interface.
Released July, 2010.
Date-based version components should be given as the four-digit year, two-digit month, and then two-digit day, but may have embedded punctuation.
Maintainer scripts must pass --package
to
dpkg-divert when creating or removing
diversions and must not use --local
.
Only dpkg-gencontrol supports variable
substitution. dpkg-genchanges (for
*.changes
) and
dpkg-source (for
*.dsc
) do not.
Architecture restrictions and wildcards are also allowed in binary package relationships provided that the binary package is not architecture-independent.
Conflicts
and Breaks
should only be used when there are file conflicts or one
package breaks the other, not just because two packages
provide similar functionality but don't interfere.
The SONAME of a library should change whenever the ABI of the library changes in a way that isn't backward-compatible. It should not change if the library ABI changes are backward-compatible. Discourage bundling shared libraries together in one package.
Ada Library Information (*.ali
) files
must be installed read-only.
Packages should normally not include a
shlibs.local
file since we now have
complete shlibs
coverage.
The SONAME of a library may instead be of the form
.
name
-major-version
.so
Libtool .la
files should not be installed
for public libraries. If they're required (for
libltdl
, for instance), the
dependency_libs
setting should be emptied.
Library packages historically including
.la
files must continue to include them
(with dependency_libs
emptied) until all
libraries that depend on that library have removed or emptied
their .la
files.
Libraries no longer need to be built with
-D_REENTRANT
, which was an obsolete
LinuxThreads requirement. Instead, say explicitly that
libraries should be built with threading support and to be
thread-safe if the library supports this.
/bin/sh
scripts may assume that
kill supports an argument of
-
, that
kill and trap support
the numeric signals listed in the XSI extension, and that
signal 13 (SIGPIPE) can be trapped with
trap.
signal
Use of
/etc/logrotate.d/
for logrotate rules is now recommended.
package
Control information files should be owned by
root:root
and either mode 644 or mode 755.
Packages providing alternatives for editor, pager, x-terminal-emulator, or x-window-manager should also provide a slave alternative for the corresponding manual page.
Cgi-bin executable files may be installed in subdirectories of
/usr/lib/cgi-bin
and web servers should
serve out executables in those subdirectories.
The GPL version 1 is now included in common-licenses and
should be referenced from there instead of included in the
copyright
file.
Released June, 2010.
The required format for the date in a changelog entry and in the Date control field is now precisely specified.
A control paragraph must not contain more than one instance of a particular field name.
The Checksums-Sha1
and
Checksums-Sha256
fields in
*.dsc
and *.changes
files are now documented and recommended.
The Format
field of
.changes
files is now 1.8. The
Format
field syntax for source package
.dsc
files allows a subtype in
parentheses, and it is used for a different purpose than the
Format
field for
.changes
files.
The syntax of the Maintainer
field is now
must rather than should.
The comma separating entries in Uploaders
is now must rather than should.
Architecture wildcards may be used in addition to specific
architectures in debian/control
and
*.dsc
Architecture fields, and in
architecture restrictions in build relationships.
Maintainer scripts are no longer guaranteed to run with a controlling terminal and must be able to fall back to noninteractive behavior (debconf handles this). Maintainer scripts may abort if there is no controlling terminal and no reasonable default for a high-priority question, but should avoid this if possible.
Breaks
should be used with
Replaces
for moving files between packages.
Breaks
should normally be used instead of
Conflicts
for transient issues and moving
files between packages. New documentation of when each should
be used.
Use Conflicts
with
Provides
if only one provider of a virtual
facility can be installed at a time.
All shared library development files are no longer required to
be in the -dev
package, only be available
when the -dev
package is installed. This
allows the -dev
package to be split as long
as it depends on the additional packages.
The UID range of user accounts is extended to 1000-59999.
init.d
scripts are a possible exception
from the normal requirement to use set -e
in each shell script.
The UCB BSD license was removed from the list of licenses that
should be referenced from
/usr/share/common-licenses/BSD
. It
should instead be included directly in
debian/copyright
, although it will still
be in common-licenses for the time being.
SETTITLE
is now documented (it has been
supported for some time). SETTITLE
is like
TITLE
but takes a template instead of a
string to allow translation.
perl-base
now provides
perlapi-
instead of a package based solely on the Perl version. Perl
packages must now depend on abiname
perlapi-$Config{debian_abi}
,
falling back on $Config{version}
if
$Config{debian_abi}
is not set.
Packages using Makefile.PL
should use
DESTDIR
rather than
PREFIX
to install into the package staging
area. PREFIX
only worked due to a
Debian-local patch.
Released January, 2010.
An FHS exception has been granted for multiarch libraries.
Permitting files to instead be installed to
/lib/triplet
and
/usr/lib/triplet
directories.
Packages may not contain named pipes and should instead create them in postinst and remove them in prerm or postrm.
/sys
and /selinux
directories are explicitly allowed as an exception to the FHS.
Released August, 2009.
DEB_*_ARCH_CPU and DEB_*_ARCH_OS variables are now documented and recommended over GNU-style variables for that information.
Source package Architecture fields may contain all in combination with other architectures. Clarify when all and any may be used in different versions of the field.
The Debian archive software does not support uploading to
multiple distributions with one *.changes
file.
The Binary field may span multiple lines.
Shared library packages are no longer allowed to install
libraries in a non-standard location and modify
ld.so.conf
. Packages should either be
installed in a standard library directory or packages using
them should be built with RPATH.
Installation directories for X programs have been clarified.
Packages are no longer required to pre-depend on x11-common
before installing into /usr/include/X11
and /usr/lib/X11
.
Manual pages are no longer required to contain only characters representable in the legacy encoding for that language.
Localized man pages should either be kept up-to-date with the original version or warn that they're not up-to-date, either with warning text or by showing missing or changed portions in the original language.
install-info is now handled via triggers so packages no longer need to invoke it in maintainer scripts. Info documents should now have directory sections and entries in the document. Packages containing info documents should add a dependency to support partial upgrades.
The requirement for Perl modules to have a versioned Depend
and Build-Depend on perl >= 5.6.0-16
has
been removed.
Released June, 2009.
The list of archive sections has been significantly expanded. See this debian-devel-announce message for the list of new sections and rules for how to categorize packages.
All packages must use debconf or equivalent for user prompting, though essential packages or their dependencies may also fall back on other methods.
The requirements for source package names are now explicitly spelled out.
Legacy XFree86 servers no longer get a special exception from
the FHS permitting /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
.
Removed obsolete dependency requirements for packages that use
/var/mail
.
Speedo fonts are now deprecated. The X backend was disabled starting in lenny.
The GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3 is included in common-licenses and should be referenced from there.
Released March, 2009.
Care should be taken when adding functionality to essential and such additions create an obligation to support that functionality in essential forever unless significant work is done.
Changelog files must be encoded in UTF-8.
Some format requirements for changelog files are now "must" instead of "should."
Alternative changelog formats have been removed. Debian only supports one changelog format for the Debian Archive.
New nocheck option for DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS indicating any build-time test suite provided by the package should not be run.
All control files must be encoded in UTF-8.
debian/control
allows comment lines
starting with # with no preceding whitespace.
Init scripts ending in .sh are not handled specially. They are not sourced and are not guaranteed to be run by /bin/sh regardless of the #! line. This brings Policy in line with the long-standing behavior of the init system in Debian.
The start action of an init script must exit successfully and not start the daemon again if it's already running.
/var/run
and
/var/lock
may be mounted as temporary
filesystems, and init scripts must therefore create any
necessary subdirectories dynamically.
/bin/sh
scripts may assume that local can
take multiple variable arguments and supports assignment.
User mailboxes may be mode 600 and owned by the user rather than mode 660, owned by user, and group mail.
Released June, 2008.
The base section has been removed. contrib and non-free have been removed from the section list; they are only categories. The base system is now defined by priority.
If dpkg-source -x doesn't provide the source that will be compiled, a debian/rules patch target is recommended and should do whatever else is necessary.
Standardized the format of DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS. Specified permitted characters for tags, required that tags be whitespace-separated, allowed packages to assume non-conflicting tags, and required unknown flags be ignored.
Added parallel=n to the standardized DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS tags, indicating that a package should be built using up to n parallel processes if the package supports it
Debian packages should not use convenience copies of code from other packages unless the included package is explicitly intended to be used that way.
If dpkg-source -x doesn't produce source ready for editing and
building with dpkg-buildpackage, packages should include a
debian/README.source
file explaining how
to generate the patched source, add a new modification, and
remove an existing modification. This file may also be used
to document packaging a new upstream release and any other
complexity of the Debian build process.
The Uploaders field in debian/control may be wrapped.
An empty Debian revision is equivalent to a Debian revision of 0 in a version number.
New Homepage field for upstream web sites.
The Breaks field declares that this package breaks another and prevents installation of the breaking package unless the package named in Breaks is deconfigured first. This field should not be used until the dpkg in Debian stable supports it.
Clarify which files should go into a shared library package, into a separate package, or into the -dev package. Suggest -tools instead of -runtime for runtime support programs, since that naming is more common in Debian.
Files in
/etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly}
must be configuration files (upgraded from should). Mention
the hourly directory.
Packages providing /etc/X11/Xresources
files need not conflict with xbase (<<
3.3.2.3a-2)
, which is long-obsolete.
Manual pages in locale-specific directories should use either the legacy encoding for that directory or UTF-8. Country names should not be included in locale-specific manual page directories unless indicating a significant difference in the language. All characters in the manual page source should be representable in the legacy encoding for a locale even if the man page is encoded in UTF-8.
The Apache 2.0 license is now in common-licenses and should be
referenced rather than quoted in
debian/copyright
.
Packages in contrib and non-free should state in the copyright file that the package is not part of Debian GNU/Linux and briefly explain why.
Underscore (_) is allowed in debconf template names.
Released December, 2007.
Package version numbers may contain tildes, which sort before anything, even the end of a part.
Scripts may assume that /bin/sh
supports
local (at a basic level) and that its test builtin (if any)
supports -a and -o binary logical operators.
The substitution variable ${binary:Version} should be used in place of ${Source-Version} for dependencies between packages of the same library.
Substantial reorganization and renaming of sections in the Debian menu structure. Packages with menu entries should be reviewed to see if the menu section has been renamed or if one of the new sections would be more appropriate.
The Source field in a .changes file may contain a version number in parentheses.
The acceptable values for the Urgency field are low, medium, high, critical, or emergency.
The shlibs file now allows an optional type field, indicating the type of package for which the line is valid. The only currently supported type is udeb, used with packages for the Debian Installer.
Packages following the Debian Configuration management specification must allow for translation of their messages by using a gettext-based system such as po-debconf.
GFDL 1.2, GPL 3, and LGPL 3 are now in common-licenses and should be referenced rather than quoted in debian/copyright.
Released October, 2006.
This release broke the normal rule against introducing normative changes without changing the major patch level.
Maintainer scripts must not be world writeable (up from a should to a must)
Released April, 2006.
It is now possible to create shared libraries without relocatable code (using -fPIC) in certain exceptional cases, provided some procedures are followed, and for creating static libraries with relocatable code (again, using -fPIC). Discussion on debian-devel@lists.debian.org, getting a rough consensus, and documenting it in README.Debian constitute most of the process.
Packages should install any relevant files into the
directories /usr/include/X11/
and
/usr/lib/X11/
, but if they do so, they
must pre-depend on x11-common (>=
1:7.0.0)
Released April, 2006.
Packages shipping web server CGI files are expected to install
them in /usr/lib/cgi-lib/
directories.
This location change perhaps should be documented in NEWS
Web server packages should include a standard scriptAlias of
cgi-lib to /usr/lib/cgi-lib
.
The version of FHS mandated by policy has been upped to 2.3.
There should be no changes required for most packages, though
new top level directories /media
,
/srv
, etc. may be of interest.
All fields, apart from the Uploaders field, in the control file are supposed to be a single logical line, which may be spread over multiple physical lines (newline followed by space is elided). However, any parser for the control file must allow the Uploaders field to be spread over multiple physical lines as well, to prepare for future changes.
When scripts are installed into a directory in the system PATH, the script name should not include an extension that denotes the scripting language currently used to implement it.
packages that invoke initscripts now must use invoke-rc.d to do so since it also pays attention to run levels and other local constraints.
We no longer use /usr/X11R6
, since we
have migrated away to using Xorg paths. This means, for one
thing, fonts live in
/usr/share/fonts/X11/
now, and
/usr/X11R6
is gone.
Released June, 2005.
Recommend doc-base, and not menu, for registering package documentation.
Run time support programs should live in subdirectories of
/usr/lib/
or
/usr/share
, and preferably the shared lib
is named the same as the package name (to avoid name
collisions).
It is recommended that HTTP servers provide an alias /images to allow packages to share image files with the web server
Released August, 2003.
Prompting the user should be done using debconf. Non debconf user prompts are now deprecated.
Released July, 2003.
Restructuring causing shifts in section numbers and bumping of the minor version number:
Many packaging manual appendices that were integrated into policy sections are now empty, and replaced with links to the Policy. In particular, the appendices that included the list of control fields were updated (new fields like Closes, Changed-By were added) and the list of fields for each of control, .changes and .dsc files is now in Policy, and they're marked mandatory, recommended or optional based on the current practice and the behavior of the deb-building tool-chain.
Elimination of needlessly deep section levels, primarily in the chapter Debian Archive, from which two new chapters were split out, Binary packages and Source packages. What remained was reordered properly, that is, some sects became sects etc.
Several sections that were redundant, crufty or simply not designed with any sort of vision, were rearranged according to the formula that everything should be either in the same place or properly interlinked. Some things remained split up between different chapters when they talked about different aspects of files: their content, their syntax, and their placement in the file system. In particular, see the new sections about changelog files.
Added Games/Simulation and Apps/Education to menu sub-policy
Debian changelogs should be UTF-8 encoded.
shared libraries must be linked against all libraries that they use symbols from in the same way that binaries are.
build-depends-indep need not be satisfied during clean target.
Released May, 2003.
packages providing the x-terminal-emulator virtual package ought to ensure that they interpret the command line exactly like xterm does.
Window managers compliant with the Window Manager Specification Project may add 40 points for ranking in the alternatives
Released March, 2003.
The section describing the Description: package field once again has full details of the long description format.
Clarified that if a package has non-build-essential build-dependencies, it should have them listed in the Build-Depends and related fields (i.e. it's not merely optional).
When asked to restart a service that isn't already running, the init script should start the service.
If the purpose of a package is to provide examples, then the
example files can be installed into
/usr/share/doc/package
(rather than
/usr/share/doc/package/examples
).
Released November, 2002.
It is no longer necessary to keep a log of changes to the upstream sources in the copyright file. Instead, all such changes should be documented in the changelog file.
Build-Depends
,
Build-Conflicts
,
Build-Depends-Indep
, and
Build-Conflicts-Indep
must also be
satisfied when the clean target is called.
A new Apps/Science menu section is available
debconf specification cleared up, various changes.
It is no longer recommended to create symlinks from nonexistent manual pages to undocumented(7). Missing manual pages for programs are still a bug.
Released August, 2002.
Packages no longer have to ask permission to call MAKEDEV in postinst, merely notifying the user ought to be enough.
cryptographic software may now be included in the main archive.
task packages are no longer permitted; tasks are now created by a special Tasks: field in the control file.
window managers that support netwm can now add 20 points when
they add themselves as an alternative for
/usr/bin/x-window-manager
The default compilation options have now changed, one should provide debugging symbols in all cases, and optionally step back optimization to -O0, depending on the DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS environment variable.
Added mention of build-arch, build-indep, etc, in describing the relationships with `Build-Depends', `Build-Conflicts', `Build-Depends-Indep', and `Build-Conflicts-Indep'. May need to review the new rules.
Changed rules on how, and when, to invoke ldconfig in maintainer scripts. Long rationale.
Added the last note in 3.5.6 upgrading checklist item regarding build rules, please see below
Released July, 2001.
Emacs and TeX are no longer mandated by policy to be priority standard packages
Programs that access docs need to do so via
/usr/share/doc
, and not via
/usr/doc/
as was the policy previously
Putting documentation in /usr/doc
versus
/usr/share/doc
is now a ``serious''
policy violation.
For web servers, one should not provide non-local access to
the /usr/share/doc
hierarchy. If one
can't provide access controls for the http://localhost/doc/
directory, then it is preferred that one ask permission to
expose that information during the install.
There are new rules for build-indep/build-arch targets and there is a new Build-Depend-Indep semantic.
Released May, 2001.
Manpages should not rely on header information to have alternative manpage names available; it should only use symlinks or .so pages to do this
Clarified note in 3.5.3.0 upgrading checklist regarding examples and templates: this refers only to those examples used by scripts; see section 10.7.3 for the whole story
Included a new section 10.9.1 describing the use of dpkg-statoverride; this does not have the weight of policy
Clarify Standards-Version: you don't need to rebuild your packages just to change the Standards-Version!
Plugins are no longer bound by all the rules of shared libraries
Clarification of priority levels of X Window System related packages
Rules for defining x-terminal-emulator improved
X Font policy rewritten: you must read this if you provide fonts for the X Window System
Packages must not ship
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/
X-related packages should usually use the regular FHS locations; imake-using packages are exempted from this
OpenMotif linked binaries have the same rules as OSF/Motif-linked ones
Released April, 2001.
The system-wide mail directory is now /var/mail, no longer /var/spool/mail. Any packages accessing the mail spool should access it via /var/mail and include a suitable Depends field;
The perl policy is now part of Debian policy proper. Perl programs and modules should follow the current Perl policy
Released April, 2001.
Build-Depends arch syntax has been changed to be less ambiguous. This should not affect any current packages
Examples and templates files for use by scripts should now
live in /usr/share/<package>
or
/usr/lib/<package>
, with symbolic
links from
/usr/share/doc/<package>/examples
as needed
Released February, 2001.
X app-defaults directory has moved from
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults
to
/etc/X11/app-defaults
Released February, 2001.
dpkg-shlibdeps now uses objdump, so shared libraries have to be run through dpkg-shlibdeps as well as executables
Released January, 2001.
Font packages for the X Window System must now declare a dependency on xutils (>= 4.0.2)
Released January, 2001.
This release broke the normal rule against introducing normative changes without changing the major patch level.
Daemon startup scripts in /etc/init.d/
should not contain modifiable parameters; these should be
moved to a file in /etc/default/
Files in /usr/share/doc
must not be
referenced by any program. If such files are needed, they
must be placed in
/usr/share/<package>/
, and symbolic
links created as required in
/usr/share/doc/<package>/
Much of the packaging manual has now been imported into the policy document
Released August, 2000.
A package of priority standard or higher may provide two binaries, one compiled with support for the X Window System, and the other without
Released August, 2000.
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.
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 (3.2) shall probably need sweeping changes in policy
Policy for packages providing the following X-based features has been codified:
X server (virtual package xserver)
X terminal emulator (virtual package x-terminal-emulator)
X window manager (virtual package x-window-manager, and
/usr/bin/x-window-manager
alternative, with priority calculation guidelines)
X fonts (this section has been written from scratch)
X application defaults
Policy for packages using the X Window System and FHS issues has been clarified;
No package may contain or make hard links to conffiles
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
Released November, 1999.
Correction to semantics of architecture lists in Build-Depends etc. Should not affect many packages
Released October, 1999.
/usr/doc/<package>
has to be a
symlink pointing to
/usr/share/doc/<package>
, to be
maintained by postinst and prerm scripts.
Introduced source dependencies (Build-Depends, etc.)
/etc/rc.boot
has been deprecated in
favour of /etc/rcS.d
. (Packages should
not be touching this directory, 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.)
Architecture-specific 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.)
Description of how to handle version numbers based on dates added
Released July, 1999.
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
Released June, 1999.
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 an associated menu policy, in a separate document, that carries the full weight of Debian policy
Programs which need to modify the files
/var/run/utmp
,
/var/log/wtmp
and
/var/log/lastlog
must be installed setgid
utmp
Released October, 1998.
Please note that section numbers below this point may not match the current 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.
Released April, 1998.
symbolic links within a toplevel directory should be relative, symbolic links between toplevel directories should be absolute (cf., Policy Weekly Issue#6, topic 2)
manpages for games should be installed in
/usr/man/man6
(cf., Policy Weekly
Issue#6, topic 3)
ldconfig must be called in the postinst script if the package installs shared libraries (cf., Policy Weekly Issue #6, fixes:bug#20515)
Released January, 1998
/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
symbolic links referencing compressed files must have the same file extension as the referenced file
/dev/tty*
serial devices should be used
instead of /dev/cu*
/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
cron jobs that need to be executed more often than daily
should be installed into /etc/cron.d
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)
details about how the backspace and delete keys should be handled
no program must depend on environment variables to get a reasonable default configuration
/etc/news/organization
and
/etc/news/server
should be supported by
all news servers and clients
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
games for X Windows have to be installed in
/usr/games
, just as non-X games
Released September, 1997.
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
Released July, 1997.
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
Released March, 1997.
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
Released September, 1996.
No hard links in source packages
Do not use dpkg-divert or update-alternatives without consultation
Shared libraries must be installed stripped