1deb(5) dpkg suite deb(5)
2
6 deb - Debian binary package format
7
9 filename.deb
10
12 The .deb format is the Debian binary package file format. It is
13 understood since dpkg 0.93.76, and is generated by default since dpkg
14 1.2.0 and 1.1.1elf (i386/ELF builds).
15 The format described here is used since Debian 0.93; details of the old
17 format are described in deb-old(5).
18
20 The file is an ar archive with a magic value of !<arch>. Only the
21 common ar archive format is supported, with no long file name
22 extensions, but with file names containing an optional trailing slash,
23 which limits their length to 15 characters (from the 16 allowed). File
24 sizes are limited to 10 ASCII decimal digits, allowing for up to
25 approximately 9536.74 MiB member files.
26 The tar archives currently allowed are, the old-style (v7) format, the
28 pre-POSIX ustar format, a subset of the GNU format (new style long
29 pathnames and long linknames, supported since dpkg 1.4.1.17; large file
30 metadata since dpkg 1.18.24), and the POSIX ustar format (long names
31 supported since dpkg 1.15.0). Unrecognized tar typeflags are
32 considered an error. Each tar entry size inside a tar archive is
33 limited to 11 ASCII octal digits, allowing for up to 8 GiB tar entries.
34 The GNU large file metadata support permits 95-bit tar entry sizes and
35 negative timestamps, and 63-bit UID, GID and device numbers.
36 The first member is named debian-binary and contains a series of lines,
38 separated by newlines. Currently only one line is present, the format
39 version number, 2.0 at the time this manual page was written. Programs
40 which read new-format archives should be prepared for the minor number
41 to be increased and new lines to be present, and should ignore these if
42 this is the case.
43 If the major number has changed, an incompatible change has been made
45 and the program should stop. If it has not, then the program should be
46 able to safely continue, unless it encounters an unexpected member in
47 the archive (except at the end), as described below.
48 The second required member is named control.tar. It is a tar archive
50 containing the package control information, either not compressed
51 (supported since dpkg 1.17.6), or compressed with gzip (with .gz
52 extension) or xz (with .xz extension, supported since 1.17.6), as a
53 series of plain files, of which the file control is mandatory and
54 contains the core control information, the conffiles, triggers, shlibs
55 and symbols files contain optional control information, and the
56 preinst, postinst, prerm and postrm files are optional maintainer
57 scripts. The control tarball may optionally contain an entry for ‘.’,
58 the current directory.
59 The third, last required member is named data.tar. It contains the
61 filesystem as a tar archive, either not compressed (supported since
62 dpkg 1.10.24), or compressed with gzip (with .gz extension), xz (with
63 .xz extension, supported since dpkg 1.15.6), bzip2 (with .bz2
64 extension, supported since dpkg 1.10.24) or lzma (with .lzma extension,
65 supported since dpkg 1.13.25).
66 These members must occur in this exact order. Current implementations
68 should ignore any additional members after data.tar. Further members
69 may be defined in the future, and (if possible) will be placed after
70 these three. Any additional members that may need to be inserted after
71 debian-binary and before control.tar or data.tar and which should be
72 safely ignored by older programs, will have names starting with an
73 underscore, ‘_’.
74 Those new members which won't be able to be safely ignored will be
76 inserted before data.tar with names starting with something other than
77 underscores, or will (more likely) cause the major version number to be
78 increased.
79
81 Current
82 application/vnd.debian.binary-package
83 Deprecated
85 application/x-debian-package
86 application/x-deb
88
90 deb-old(5), dpkg-deb(1), deb-control(5), deb-conffiles(5), deb-
91 triggers(5), deb-shlibs(5), deb-symbols(5), deb-preinst(5), deb-
92 postinst(5), deb-prerm(5), deb-postrm(5).
931.20.9 2021-04-13 deb(5)