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 (no subscription required to post):

debian-dpkg@lists.debian.org


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





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

To prepare the dpkg source tree from git before starting the build process
some required software needs to be installed:

GNU autoconf >= 2.60
GNU automake >= 1.8
GNU gettext >= 0.18 (or just autopoint if using --disable-nls)
flex

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

$ autoreconf -f -i

the source should be roughly equivalent to the distributed tar source.


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

The minimum software required to configure and build dpkg from a tarball is:

C89 compiler with few C99 extensions (see doc/coding-style.txt)
GNU make
pkg-config
perl

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

zlib (used instead of gzip command-line tool)
xz's liblzma (used instead of xz command-line tool)
libbzip2 (used instead of bzip2 command-line tool)
libselinux
curses compatible library (needed on --with-dselect)

To run the test suite («make check»):

TimeDate perl module
IO-String perl module

To enable additional developer's documentation («make doc») this software
will be needed:

pod2man
doxygen
dot

To enable translated documentation this software will be needed:

po4a >= 0.36.4 (>= 0.41 for VPATH builds)

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

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

The build process is done by running the usual «./configure; make». To
see all available configuration options please run «./configure --help».
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