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The checklist below has been created to simplify the upgrading process of old packages. Note that this list is not "official"; it simply gives 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: [3.4] means section 3.4. The section numbering changed when the packaging manual was incorporated into policy; the section numbers used below refer to the current version.
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. If you are upgrading from Policy version < 2.5.0, it may be easier to check through the whole of policy instead of picking your way through this list.
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Release Jan 2010.
An FHS exception has been granted for multiarch libraries. Permitting files to
instead be installed to /lib/triplet and
/usr/lib/triplet directories.
Explicitly state that 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 Aug 2009.
Add DEB_*_ARCH_CPU and DEB_*_ARCH_OS variables and recommend them 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.
Remove the permission for shared library packages 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.
Clarify installation directories for X programs and remove the requirement to
pre-depend on x11-common before installing into /usr/include/X11
and /usr/lib/X11.
Remove the requirement that all characters in a manual page be 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 Jun 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 Mar 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.
Tighten some format requirements for changelog files from a should to a must.
Remove alternative changelog formats. 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 Jun 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 Dec 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 Oct 2006.
Maintainer scripts must not be world writeable (up from a should to a must)
Released Apr 2006.
Revert the cgi-lib change.
Released Apr 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 Apr 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 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 Aug 2003.
Prompting the user should be done using debconf. Non debconf user prompts are now deprecated.
Released Jul 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 Mar 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 Nov 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 Aug 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 Jul 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 Apr 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; details in
The perl policy is now part of Debian policy proper. Perl programs and modules should follow the current Perl policy
Released Apr 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 Feb 2001.
X app-defaults directory has moved from
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults to
/etc/X11/app-defaults
Released Feb 2001.
dpkg-shlibdeps now uses objdump, so shared libraries have to be run through dpkg-shlibdeps as well as executables
Released Jan 2001.
Font packages for the X Window System must now declare a dependency on xutils (>= 4.0.2)
Released Jan 2001.
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 Aug 00.
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 Aug 00.
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. Details in
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 Nov 1999.
Correction to semantics of architecture lists in Build-Depends etc. Should not affect many packages
Released Oct 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 Jul 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 Jun 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
Please note that section numbers below this point may not be up to date
Released Oct 1998. 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 Apr 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)
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)
Released Jan 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 Sep 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 Mar 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 Nov 1996.
Some changes WRT shared libraries
Released Sep 1996.
No hard links in source packages
Do not use dpkg-divert or update-alternatives without
consultation
Shared libraries must be installed stripped
Released Aug 1996.
Upstream changelog must be installed too
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Policy checklist for upgrading your packages
Bill Allombertballombe@debian.orgsrivasta@debian.org