dpkg

dpkg - Debian's package maintenance system

The primary interface for the dpkg suite is the ‘dselect’ program;
a more low-level and less user-friendly interface is available in
the form of the ‘dpkg’ command.


Releases
--------

The current legacy, stable and development releases can be found at:



For older releases check:




Mailing List
------------

The subscription interface and web archives can be found at:



The mailing list address is:

debian-dpkg@lists.debian.org


Source Repository
-----------------





Building from git source
------------------------

To prepare the source tree before starting the build process, some software
needs to be installed, additional software might provide optional features.

The minimum software required to build dpkg is:

C89 compiler with few C99 extensions (see doc/coding-style.txt)
GNU make
GNU autoconf >= 2.60
GNU automake >= 1.8
GNU gettext >= 0.18
pkg-config
flex
perl

To run the test suite («make check»):

TimeDate perl module
IO-String perl module

To enable optional functionality or programs, this software might be needed:

zlib (used instead of the command-line tool)
liblzma (from the xz project; used instead of the command-line tool)
libbzip2 (from the bzip2 project; used instead of the command-line tool)
libselinux (needed for SELinux support)
curses compatible library (needed for dselect)

To enable translated or additional («make doc») documentation this
software will be needed:

po4a >= 0.36.4 (>= 0.41 for VPATH builds)
pod2man
doxygen
dot

To enable code coverage («./configure --enable-coverage; make coverage»)
this software is needed:

lcov (from the Linux Test Project)
Devel-Cover perl module


After installing the needed software, and running the following command on
the git tree:

$ autoreconf -f -i

the source should be equivalent to the distributed tar source.


Building from tar source
------------------------

The instructions to build the distributed source are included in the
INSTALL file.

The following configure options might be of interest to disable specific
programs:

--without-dselect
--without-start-stop-daemon
--without-update-alternatives
--without-install-info

And the following to disable modifications to the build flags:

--disable-compiler-warnings
--disable-compiler-optimisations
--disable-linker-optimisations

To see all available configuration options please run «./configure --help».