1deb-changelog(5) dpkg suite deb-changelog(5)
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6 deb-changelog - dpkg source packages' changelog file format
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9 changelog
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12 Changes in the packaged version of a project are explained in the
13 changelog file debian/changelog. This includes modifications made in
14 the source package compared to the upstream one as well as other
15 changes and updates to the package.
16 The format of the debian/changelog allows the package building tools to
18 discover which version of the package is being built and find out other
19 release-specific information.
20 That format is a series of entries like this:
22 package (version) distributions; metadata
24 [optional blank line(s), stripped]
25 * change-details
26 more-change-details
27 [blank line(s), included in output of dpkg-parsechangelog(1)]
28 * even-more-change-details
29 [optional blank line(s), stripped]
30 -- maintainer-name <email-address> date
31 package and version are the source package name and version number.
34 distributions lists one or more space-separated distributions where
36 this version should be installed when it is uploaded; it is copied to
37 the Distribution field in the .changes file.
38 metadata is a comma-separated list of keyword=value items. The only
40 keywords currently supported by dpkg are urgency and binary-only.
41 urgency's value is used for the Urgency field in the .changes file for
42 the upload. binary-only with a yes value, is used to denote that this
43 changelog entry is for a binary-only non-maintainer upload (an
44 automatic binary rebuild with the only change being the changelog
45 entry).
46 The change details may in fact be any series of lines starting with at
48 least two spaces, but conventionally each change starts with an
49 asterisk and a separating space and continuation lines are indented so
50 as to bring them in line with the start of the text above. Blank lines
51 may be used here to separate groups of changes, if desired.
52 If this upload resolves bugs recorded in the distribution bug tracking
54 system, they may be automatically closed on the inclusion of this
55 package into the distribution archive by including the string:
56 Closes: Bug#nnnnn
57 in the change details (the exact Perl regular expression is
58 /closes:\s*(?:bug)?\#?\s?\d+(?:,\s*(?:bug)?\#?\s?\d+)*/i). This
59 information is conveyed via the Closes field in the .changes file.
60 The maintainer name and email address used in the changelog should be
62 the details of the person who prepared this release of the package.
63 They are not necessarily those of the uploader or usual package
64 maintainer. The information here will be copied to the Changed-By
65 field in the .changes file, and then later might be used to send an
66 acknowledgement when the upload has been installed in the distribution
67 archive.
68 The date has the following format (compatible and with the same
70 semantics of RFC2822 and RFC5322, or what «date -R» generates):
71 day-of-week, dd month yyyy hh:mm:ss +zzzz
73 where:
75 day-of-week
77 Is one of: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun.
78 dd Is a one- or two-digit day of the month (01-31).
80 month Is one of: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct,
82 Nov, Dec.
83 yyyy Is the four-digit year (e.g. 2010).
85 hh Is the two-digit hour (00-23).
87 mm Is the two-digit minutes (00-59).
89 ss Is the two-digit seconds (00-60).
91 [+-]zzzz
93 Is the time zone offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
94 ‘+’ indicates that the time is ahead of (i.e., east of) UTC and
95 ‘-’ indicates that the time is behind (i.e., west of) UTC. The
96 first two digits indicate the hour difference from UTC and the
97 last two digits indicate the number of additional minutes
98 difference from UTC. The last two digits must be in the range
99 00-59.
100 The first “title” line with the package name must start at the left
102 hand margin. The “trailer” line with the maintainer and date details
103 must be preceded by exactly one space. The maintainer details and the
104 date must be separated by exactly two spaces.
105 Any line that consists entirely (i.e., no leading whitespace) of # or
107 /* */ style comments or RCS keywords.
108 Vim modelines or Emacs local variables, and ancient changelog entries
110 with other formats at the end of the file should be accepted and
111 preserved on output, but their contents might be otherwise ignored and
112 parsing stopped at that point.
113 The entire changelog must be encoded in UTF-8.
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117 debian/changelog
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120 dpkg (1.17.18) unstable; urgency=low
121 [ Guillem Jover ]
123 * Handle empty minimum versions when initializing dependency versions,
124 as the code is mapping the minimum version 0 to '' to avoid outputting
125 useless versions. Regression introduced in dpkg 1.17.17. Closes: #764929
126 [ Updated programs translations ]
128 * Catalan (Guillem Jover).
129 [ Updated dselect translations ]
131 * Catalan (Guillem Jover).
132 * German (Sven Joachim).
133 -- Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> Sun, 12 Oct 2014 15:47:44 +0200
135
137 deb-version(7), deb-changes(5), dpkg-parsechangelog(1).
1381.19.7 2019-06-03 deb-changelog(5)