.\" Hey, Emacs! This is an -*- nroff -*- source file. .\" Author: Raul Miller .\" Includes text from the debian Guidelines by Ian Jackson, Ian Murdock .TH DEB-CONTROL 5 "29th November 1995" "Debian Project" "Debian GNU/Linux" .SH NAME deb\-control \- Debian GNU/Linux packages' master control file format .SH SYNOPSIS control .SH DESCRIPTION Master control file format: .LP The `control' file contains a number of fields. Each field begins with a tag, such as .B Package or .B Version (case insensitive), followed by a colon, and the body of the field. 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 the case of the .B Description field, see below). .SH REQUIRED FIELDS .TP .BR Package: \ The value of this field is used to generate file names by some installation tools. .TP .BR Version: \ Typically, this is the original portable package's version number in whatever form the program's author uses. It may also include a Debian revision number (for non-native packages). If both version and revision are supplied, they are seperated by a '-'. For this reason, the original version cannot have a '-' in its version number. .TP .BR Maintainer: \ Should be in the format `Joe Bloggs ', and is typically the person who created the package as opposed to the author of the software that was packages. .TP .BR Description: \ The format for the package description is a short brief summary on the first line (after the "Description" field). The following lines can be used as a longer, more detailed description. Each line of the long description must be preceded by a space, and blank lines in the long desription must contain a single '.' following the preceding space. .SH OPTIONAL FIELDS .TP .BR Section: \
This is a general field that gives the package a category based on the software that it installs. Some common sections are `mail', `text' and `new'. .TP .BR Priority: \ Sets the importance of this package in relation to the system as a whole. Common priorities are `base', `standard' and `optional'. .LP In Debian, the .B Section and .B Priority fields have a defined set of accepted values based on policy. They are used to decide how the packages are layed out in the archive. A list of these can be obtained from the latest .B debian-policy package. .TP .BR Essential: \ This field is usually only needed when the answer is `yes'. It denotes a package that is required for proper operation of the system. Dpkg will not allow this an .B Essential package to be removed without using one of the force options. .TP .BR Architecture: \ The architecture specifies which type of hardware this package was compiled for. Common architectures are `i386', `sparc' and `alpha'. Note that the .B all option is meant for packages that are architecture independent. Some examples of this are perl scripts and documentation. .TP .BR Source: \ The name of the source that this package came from, if different than the name of the package itself. .TP .BR Depends: \ List of packages that are required for this package to provide a non-trivial amount of functionality. The package maintenance software will not allow a package to be installed without also installing packages listed in its .B Depends field, and will run the postinst scripts of packages listed in DEPENDS fields before those of the packages which depend on them, and run prerm scripts before. .TP .BR Pre-Depends: \ List of packages that must be installed .B and configured before this one can be installed. This is usually used in the case where this package requires the pre depend for running its preinst script. .TP .BR Recommends: \ Lists packages that would be found together with this one in all but unusual installations. The package maintenance software will warn the user if they install a package without those listed in its .B Recommends field. .TP .BR Suggests: \ Lists packages that are related to this one and can perhaps enhance its usefulness, but without which installing this package is perfectly reasonable. The package maintenance software will not moan at the user for not selecting suggested packages, but may use the information in the .B Suggests field to assist the user during package selection. .LP The syntax of .B Depends , .B Pre-Depends , .B Recommends and .B Suggests is a list of groups of alternative packages. Each group is a list of packages separated by vertical bar (or `pipe') symbols, `|'. The groups are separated by commas. Each package is a package name optionally followed by a version number specification in parentheses. A version number may start with a `>>', in which case any later version will match, and may specify or omit the Debian packaging revision (separated by a hyphen). Commas are to be read as `AND', and pipes as `OR', with pipes binding more tightly. .LP Accepted version relationships are ">>" for greater than, "<<" for less than, ">=" for greater than or equal to, "<=" for less than or equal to, and "=" for equal to. .TP .BR Conflicts: \ Lists packages that conflict with this one, for example by containing files with the same names (an example would be Smail vs. Sendmail). The package maintenance software will not allow conflicting packages to be installed at the same time. Two conflicting packages should each include a .B Conflicts line mentioning the other. .TP .BR Replaces: \ List of packages that this one replaces. This is used for allowing this package to overwrite the files of another package and is usually used with the .B Conflicts field to force removal of the other package, if this one also has the same files as the conflicted package. .TP .BR Provides: \ This is a list of virtual packages that this one provides. Usuaully this is used in the case of several packages all providing the same service. For example, sendmail and smail both can serve as a mail server, so they provide a common package on which other packages can depend. This will allow sendmail or smail to serve as a valid option to satisy the one dependency. This prevents the packages that depend on a mail server from having to know the package names for all of them, and using `|' to seperate the list. .LP The syntax of .B Conflicts , .B Replaces and .B Provides is a list of package names, separated by commas (and optional whitespace). In the .B Conflicts field, the comma should be read as `OR'. An optional version can also be given with the same syntax as above for the .B Conflicts and .B Replaces fields. .SH EXAMPLE .PP .RS .nf Package: grep Essential: yes Priority: required Section: base Maintainer: Wichert Akkerman Architecture: sparc Version: 2.3-7 Pre-Depends: libc6 (>= 2.0.105) Description: GNU grep, egrep and fgrep. The GNU set of grep tools. Many times faster than standard unix grep. .fi .RE .PP .SH SEE ALSO .BR deb (5), .BR dpkg (8), .BR dpkg-deb (1), .BR dselect (8).