1deb-control(5)                    dpkg suite                    deb-control(5)
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NAME

6       deb-control - Debian binary packages' master control file format
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SYNOPSIS

9       DEBIAN/control
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DESCRIPTION

12       Each Debian binary package contains a control file in its control
13       member, and its deb822(5) format is a subset of the master
14       debian/control file in Debian source packages, see deb-src-control(5).
15
16       This file contains a number of fields.  Each field begins with a tag,
17       such as Package or Version (case insensitive), followed by a colon, and
18       the body of the field (case sensitive unless stated otherwise).  Fields
19       are delimited only by field tags. In other words, field text may be
20       multiple lines in length, but the installation tools will generally
21       join lines when processing the body of the field (except in the case of
22       the Description field, see below).
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FIELDS

25       Package: package-name (required)
26           The value of this field determines the package name, and is used to
27           generate file names by most installation tools.
28
29       Package-Type: deb|udeb|type
30           This field defines the type of the package.  udeb is for size-
31           constrained packages used by the debian installer.  deb is the
32           default value, it is assumed if the field is absent.  More types
33           might be added in the future.
34
35       Version: version-string (required)
36           Typically, this is the original package's version number in
37           whatever form the program's author uses. It may also include a
38           Debian revision number (for non-native packages). The exact format
39           and sorting algorithm are described in deb-version(7).
40
41       Maintainer: fullname-email (recommended)
42           Should be in the format “Joe Bloggs <jbloggs@foo.com>”, and is
43           typically the person who created the package, as opposed to the
44           author of the software that was packaged.
45
46       Description: short-description (recommended)
47        long-description
48           The format for the package description is a short brief summary on
49           the first line (after the Description field). The following lines
50           should be used as a longer, more detailed description. Each line of
51           the long description must be preceded by a space, and blank lines
52           in the long description must contain a single ‘.’ following the
53           preceding space.
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55       Section: section
56           This is a general field that gives the package a category based on
57           the software that it installs.  Some common sections are utils,
58           net, mail, text, x11, etc.
59
60       Priority: priority
61           Sets the importance of this package in relation to the system as a
62           whole.  Common priorities are required, standard, optional, extra,
63           etc.
64
65       The Section and Priority fields usually have a defined set of accepted
66       values based on the specific distribution policy.
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68       Installed-Size: size
69           The approximate total size of the package's installed files, in KiB
70           units.  The algorithm to compute the size is described in
71           deb-substvars(5).
72
73       Protected: yes|no
74           This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes.  It
75           denotes a package that is required mostly for proper booting of the
76           system or used for custom system-local meta-packages.  dpkg(1) or
77           any other installation tool will not allow a Protected package to
78           be removed (at least not without using one of the force options).
79
80           Supported since dpkg 1.20.1.
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82       Essential: yes|no
83           This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes.  It
84           denotes a package that is required for the packaging system, for
85           proper operation of the system in general or during boot (although
86           the latter should be converted to Protected field instead).
87           dpkg(1) or any other installation tool will not allow an Essential
88           package to be removed (at least not without using one of the force
89           options).
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91       Build-Essential: yes|no
92           This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes, and is
93           commonly injected by the archive software.  It denotes a package
94           that is required when building other packages.
95
96       Architecture: arch|all (required)
97           The architecture specifies which type of hardware this package was
98           compiled for.  Common architectures are amd64, armel, i386,
99           powerpc, etc.  Note that the all value is meant for packages that
100           are architecture independent.  Some examples of this are shell and
101           Perl scripts, and documentation.
102
103       Origin: name
104           The name of the distribution this package is originating from.
105
106       Bugs: url
107           The url of the bug tracking system for this package. The current
108           used format is bts-type://bts-address, like
109           debbugs://bugs.debian.org.
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111       Homepage: url
112           The upstream project home page url.
113
114       Tag: tag-list
115           List of tags describing the qualities of the package. The
116           description and list of supported tags can be found in the debtags
117           package.
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119       Multi-Arch: no|same|foreign|allowed
120           This field is used to indicate how this package should behave on a
121           multi-arch installations.
122
123           no  This value is the default when the field is omitted, in which
124               case adding the field with an explicit no value is generally
125               not needed.
126
127           same
128               This package is co-installable with itself, but it must not be
129               used to satisfy the dependency of any package of a different
130               architecture from itself.
131
132           foreign
133               This package is not co-installable with itself, but should be
134               allowed to satisfy a non-arch-qualified dependency of a package
135               of a different arch from itself (if a dependency has an
136               explicit arch-qualifier then the value foreign is ignored).
137
138           allowed
139               This allows reverse-dependencies to indicate in their Depends
140               field that they accept this package from a foreign architecture
141               by qualifying the package name with :any, but has no effect
142               otherwise.
143
144       Source: source-name [(source-version)]
145           The name of the source package that this binary package came from,
146           if it is different than the name of the package itself.  If the
147           source version differs from the binary version, then the source-
148           name will be followed by a source-version in parenthesis.  This can
149           happen for example on a binary-only non-maintainer upload, or when
150           setting a different binary version via «dpkg-gencontrol -v».
151
152       Subarchitecture: value
153       Kernel-Version: value
154       Installer-Menu-Item: value
155           These fields are used by the debian-installer and are usually not
156           needed.  For more details about them, see
157           <https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/-/raw/master/doc/devel/modules.txt>.
158
159       Depends: package-list
160           List of packages that are required for this package to provide a
161           non-trivial amount of functionality. The package maintenance
162           software will not allow a package to be installed if the packages
163           listed in its Depends field aren't installed (at least not without
164           using the force options).  In an installation, the postinst scripts
165           of packages listed in Depends fields are run before those of the
166           packages which depend on them. On the opposite, in a removal, the
167           prerm script of a package is run before those of the packages
168           listed in its Depends field.
169
170       Pre-Depends: package-list
171           List of packages that must be installed and configured before this
172           one can be installed. This is usually used in the case where this
173           package requires another package for running its preinst script.
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175       Recommends: package-list
176           Lists packages that would be found together with this one in all
177           but unusual installations. The package maintenance software will
178           warn the user if they install a package without those listed in its
179           Recommends field.
180
181       Suggests: package-list
182           Lists packages that are related to this one and can perhaps enhance
183           its usefulness, but without which installing this package is
184           perfectly reasonable.
185
186       The syntax of Depends, Pre-Depends, Recommends and Suggests fields is a
187       list of groups of alternative packages. Each group is a list of
188       packages separated by vertical bar (or “pipe”) symbols, ‘|’.  The
189       groups are separated by commas.  Commas are to be read as “AND”, and
190       pipes as “OR”, with pipes binding more tightly.  Each package name is
191       optionally followed by an architecture qualifier appended after a colon
192:’, optionally followed by a version number specification in
193       parentheses.
194
195       An architecture qualifier name can be a real Debian architecture name
196       (since dpkg 1.16.5) or any (since dpkg 1.16.2).  If omitted, the
197       default is the current binary package architecture.  A real Debian
198       architecture name will match exactly that architecture for that package
199       name, any will match any architecture for that package name if the
200       package has been marked as Multi-Arch: allowed.
201
202       A version number may start with a ‘>>’, in which case any later version
203       will match, and may specify or omit the Debian packaging revision
204       (separated by a hyphen).  Accepted version relationships are ‘>>’ for
205       greater than, ‘<<’ for less than, ‘>=’ for greater than or equal to,
206<=’ for less than or equal to, and ‘=’ for equal to.
207
208       Breaks: package-list
209           Lists packages that this one breaks, for example by exposing bugs
210           when the named packages rely on this one. The package maintenance
211           software will not allow broken packages to be configured; generally
212           the resolution is to upgrade the packages named in a Breaks field.
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214       Conflicts: package-list
215           Lists packages that conflict with this one, for example by
216           containing files with the same names. The package maintenance
217           software will not allow conflicting packages to be installed at the
218           same time. Two conflicting packages should each include a Conflicts
219           line mentioning the other.
220
221       Replaces: package-list
222           List of packages files from which this one replaces. This is used
223           for allowing this package to overwrite the files of another package
224           and is usually used with the Conflicts field to force removal of
225           the other package, if this one also has the same files as the
226           conflicted package.
227
228       The syntax of Breaks, Conflicts and Replaces is a list of package
229       names, separated by commas (and optional whitespace).  In the Breaks
230       and Conflicts fields, the comma should be read as “OR”.  An optional
231       architecture qualifier can also be appended to the package name with
232       the same syntax as above, but the default is any instead of the binary
233       package architecture.  An optional version can also be given with the
234       same syntax as above for the Breaks, Conflicts and Replaces fields.
235
236       Enhances: package-list
237           This is a list of packages that this one enhances.  It is similar
238           to Suggests but in the opposite direction.
239
240       Provides: package-list
241           This is a list of virtual packages that this one provides.  Usually
242           this is used in the case of several packages all providing the same
243           service.  For example, sendmail and exim can serve as a mail
244           server, so they provide a common package (“mail-transport-agent”)
245           on which other packages can depend.  This will allow sendmail or
246           exim to serve as a valid option to satisfy the dependency.  This
247           prevents the packages that depend on a mail server from having to
248           know the package names for all of them, and using ‘|’ to separate
249           the list.
250
251       The syntax of Provides is a list of package names, separated by commas
252       (and optional whitespace).  An optional architecture qualifier can also
253       be appended to the package name with the same syntax as above.  If
254       omitted, the default is the current binary package architecture.  An
255       optional exact (equal to) version can also be given with the same
256       syntax as above (honored since dpkg 1.17.11).
257
258       Built-Using: package-list
259           This dependency field lists extra source packages that were used
260           during the build of this binary package, for license compliance
261           purposes.  This is an indication to the archive maintenance
262           software that these extra source packages must be kept whilst this
263           binary package is maintained.  This field must be a comma-separated
264           list of source package names with strict ‘=’ version relationships
265           enclosed within parenthesis.  Note that the archive maintenance
266           software is likely to refuse to accept an upload which declares a
267           Built-Using relationship which cannot be satisfied within the
268           archive.
269
270       Static-Built-Using: package-list
271           This dependency field lists extra source packages that were used
272           during the build of this binary package, for static building
273           purposes (for example linking against static libraries, builds for
274           source-centered languages such as Go or Rust, usage of header-only
275           C/C++ libraries, injecting data blobs into code, etc.).  This is
276           useful to track whether this package might need to be rebuilt when
277           source packages listed here have been updated, for example due to
278           security updates.  This field must be a comma-separated list of
279           source package names with strict ‘=’ version relationships enclosed
280           within parenthesis.
281
282           Supported since dpkg 1.21.3.
283
284       Built-For-Profiles: profile-list (obsolete)
285           This field used to specify a whitespace separated list of build
286           profiles that this binary packages was built with (since dpkg
287           1.17.2 until 1.18.18).  The information previously found in this
288           field can now be found in the .buildinfo file, which supersedes it.
289
290       Auto-Built-Package: reason-list
291           This field specifies a whitespace separated list of reasons why
292           this package was auto-generated.  Binary packages marked with this
293           field will not appear in the debian/control master source control
294           file.  The only currently used reason is debug-symbols.
295
296       Build-Ids: elf-build-id-list
297           This field specifies a whitespace separated list of ELF build-ids.
298           These are unique identifiers for semantically identical ELF
299           objects, for each of these within the package.
300
301           The format or the way to compute each build-id is not defined by
302           design.
303

EXAMPLE

305        Package: grep
306        Essential: yes
307        Priority: required
308        Section: base
309        Maintainer: Wichert Akkerman <wakkerma@debian.org>
310        Architecture: sparc
311        Version: 2.4-1
312        Pre-Depends: libc6 (>= 2.0.105)
313        Provides: rgrep
314        Conflicts: rgrep
315        Description: GNU grep, egrep and fgrep.
316         The GNU family of grep utilities may be the "fastest grep in the west".
317         GNU grep is based on a fast lazy-state deterministic matcher (about
318         twice as fast as stock Unix egrep) hybridized with a Boyer-Moore-Gosper
319         search for a fixed string that eliminates impossible text from being
320         considered by the full regexp matcher without necessarily having to
321         look at every character. The result is typically many times faster
322         than Unix grep or egrep. (Regular expressions containing backreferencing
323         will run more slowly, however).
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BUGS

326       The Build-Ids field uses a rather generic name out of its original
327       context within an ELF object, which serves a very specific purpose and
328       executable format.
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SEE ALSO

331       deb822(5), deb-src-control(5), deb(5), deb-version(7), debtags(1),
332       dpkg(1), dpkg-deb(1).
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3361.21.21                           2023-02-25                    deb-control(5)
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