deb-changes(5) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FIELDS | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

deb-changes(5)                 dpkg suite                 deb-changes(5)

NAME         top

       deb-changes - Debian upload changes control file format

SYNOPSIS         top

       filename.changes

DESCRIPTION         top

       Each Debian upload is composed of a .changes control file, which
       contains a number of fields in deb822(5) format.

       Each field begins with a tag, such as Source or Binary (case
       insensitive), followed by a colon, and the body of the field
       (case sensitive unless stated otherwise).  Fields are delimited
       only by field tags.  In other words, field text may be multiple
       lines in length, but the installation tools will generally join
       lines when processing the body of the field (except in case of
       the multiline fields Description, Changes, Files, Checksums-Sha1
       and Checksums-Sha256, see below).

       The control data might be enclosed in an OpenPGP ASCII Armored
       signature, as specified in RFC4880.

FIELDS         top

       Format: format-version (required)
           The value of this field declares the format version of the
           file.  The syntax of the field value is a version number with
           a major and minor component.  Backward incompatible changes
           to the format will bump the major version, and backward
           compatible changes (such as field additions) will bump the
           minor version.  The current format version is 1.8.

       Date: release-date (required)
           The date the package was built or last edited.  It must be in
           the same format as the date in a deb-changelog(5) entry.

           The value of this field is usually extracted from the
           debian/changelog file.

       Source: source-name [(source-version)] (required)
           The name of the source package.  If the source version
           differs from the binary version, then the source-name will be
           followed by a source-version in parenthesis.  This can happen
           when the upload is a binary-only non-maintainer upload.

       Binary: binary-package-list (required in context)
           This folded field is a space-separated list of binary
           packages to upload.  If the upload is source-only, then the
           field is omitted (since dpkg 1.19.3).

       Architecture: arch-list
           Lists the architectures of the files currently being
           uploaded.  Common architectures are amd64, armel, i386, etc.
           Note that the all value is meant for packages that are
           architecture independent.  If the source for the package is
           also being uploaded, the special entry source is also
           present.  Architecture wildcards must never be present in the
           list.

       Version: version-string (required)
           Typically, this is the original package's version number in
           whatever form the program's author uses.  It may also include
           a Debian revision number (for non-native packages).  The
           exact format and sorting algorithm are described in
           deb-version(7).

       Distribution: distributions (required)
           Lists one or more space-separated distributions where this
           version should be installed when it is uploaded to the
           archive.

       Urgency: urgency (recommended)
           The urgency of the upload.  The currently known values, in
           increasing order of urgency, are: low, medium, high, critical
           and emergency.

       Maintainer: fullname-email (required)
           Should be in the format “Joe Bloggs <jbloggs@example.org>”,
           and is typically the person who created the package, as
           opposed to the author of the software that was packaged.

       Changed-By: fullname-email
           Should be in the format “Joe Bloggs <jbloggs@example.org>”,
           and is typically the person who prepared the package changes
           for this release.

       Description: (recommended)
        binary-package-name - binary-package-summary
           This multiline field contains a list of binary package names
           followed by a space, a dash (‘-’) and their possibly
           truncated short descriptions.  If the upload is source-only,
           then the field is omitted (since dpkg 1.19.3).

       Closes: bug-number-list
           A space-separated list of bug report numbers for bug reports
           that have been resolved with this upload.  The distribution
           archive software might use this field to automatically close
           the referred bug numbers in the distribution bug tracking
           system.

       Binary-Only: yes
           This field denotes that the upload is a binary-only non-
           maintainer build.  It originates from the binary-only=yes
           key/value from the changelog metadata entry.

       Built-For-Profiles: profile-list
           This field specifies a whitespace separated list of build
           profiles that this upload was built with.

       Changes: (required)
        changelog-entries
           This multiline field contains the concatenated text of all
           changelog entries that are part of the upload.  To make this
           a valid multiline field empty lines are replaced with a
           single full stop (‘.’) and all lines are indented by one
           space character.  The exact content depends on the changelog
           format.

       Files: (required)
        md5sum size section priority filename
           This multiline field contains a list of files with an md5sum,
           size, section and priority for each one.

           The first line of the field value (the part on the same line
           as the field name followed by a colon) is always empty.  The
           content of the field is expressed as continuation lines, one
           line per file.  Each line consists of space-separated entries
           describing the file: the md5sum, the file size, the file
           section, the file priority, and the file name.

           This field lists all files that make up the upload.  The list
           of files in this field must match the list of files in the
           other related Checksums fields.

       Checksums-Sha1: (required)
       Checksums-Sha256: (required)
        checksum size filename
           These multiline fields contain a list of files with a
           checksum and size for each one.  These fields have the same
           syntax and differ only in the checksum algorithm used: SHA-1
           for Checksums-Sha1 and SHA-256 for Checksums-Sha256.

           The first line of the field value (the part on the same line
           as the field name followed by a colon) is always empty.  The
           content of the field is expressed as continuation lines, one
           line per file.  Each line consists of space-separated entries
           describing the file: the checksum, the file size, and the
           file name.

           These fields list all files that make up the upload.  The
           list of files in these fields must match the list of files in
           the Files field and the other related Checksums fields.

BUGS         top

       The Files field is inconsistent with the other Checksums fields.
       The Changed-By and Maintainer fields have confusing names.  The
       Distribution field contains information about what is commonly
       referred to as a suite.

SEE ALSO         top

       deb822(5), deb-src-control(5), deb-version(7).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the dpkg (Debian Package Manager) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=dpkg⟩.  This
       page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository ⟨git
       clone https://git.dpkg.org/git/dpkg/dpkg.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2023-12-18.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

1.22.2-1-gf1f96                2023-12-18                 deb-changes(5)

Pages that refer to this page: dpkg-genchanges(1)deb-buildinfo(5)deb-changelog(5)deb-src-control(5)