Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

  
 
  

home | help
deb-changelog(5)		   dpkg suite			deb-changelog(5)

NAME
     deb-changelog - dpkg source packages' changelog file format

SYNOPSIS
     changelog

DESCRIPTION
     Changes in the packaged version of a project are explained in the changelog
     file  debian/changelog.   This  includes  modifications  made in the source
     package compared to the upstream one as well as other changes  and  updates
     to the package.

     The  format  of  the  debian/changelog allows the package building tools to
     discover which version of the package is being built and find out other re-
     lease-specific information.

     That format is a series of entries like this:

     package (version) distributions; metadata
	       [optional blank line(s), stripped]
       * change-details
	 more-change-details
	       [blank line(s), included in output of dpkg-parsechangelog(1)]
       * even-more-change-details
	       [optional blank line(s), stripped]
      -- maintainer-name <email-address>  date

     package and version are the source package name and version number.

     distributions lists one or more space-separated  distributions  where  this
     version  should  be installed when it is uploaded; it is copied to the Dis-
     tribution field in the .changes file.

     metadata is a comma-separated list of keyword=value items.  The  only  key-
     words  currently  supported by dpkg are urgency and binary-only.  urgency's
     value is used for the Urgency field in the .changes file  for  the  upload.
     binary-only  with	a yes value, is used to denote that this changelog entry
     is for a binary-only non-maintainer upload  (an  automatic  binary  rebuild
     with the only change being the changelog entry).

     The  change  details  may	in  fact be any series of lines starting with at
     least two spaces, but conventionally each change starts  with  an	asterisk
     and  a  separating space and continuation lines are indented so as to bring
     them in line with the start of the text above.  Blank  lines  may	be  used
     here to separate groups of changes, if desired.

     If this upload resolves bugs recorded in the distribution bug tracking sys-
     tem, they may be automatically closed on the inclusion of this package into
     the distribution archive by including the string:
       Closes: Bug#nnnnn
     in   the	change	 details   (the   exact   Perl	 regular  expression  is
     /closes:\s*(?:bug)?\#?\s?\d+(?:,\s*(?:bug)?\#?\s?\d+)*/i).   This	informa-
     tion is conveyed via the Closes field in the .changes file.

     The  maintainer  name and email address used in the changelog should be the
     details of the person who prepared this release of the package.   They  are
     not necessarily those of the uploader or usual package maintainer.  The in-
     formation here will be copied to the Changed-By field in the .changes file,
     and then later might be used to send an acknowledgement when the upload has
     been installed in the distribution archive.

     The  date	has the following format (compatible and with the same semantics
     of RFC2822 and RFC5322, or what <<date -R>> generates):

	    day-of-week, dd month yyyy hh:mm:ss +zzzz

     where:

     day-of-week
	    Is one of: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun.

     dd     Is a one- or two-digit day of the month (01-31).

     month  Is one of: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug,	Sep,  Oct,  Nov,
	    Dec.

     yyyy   Is the four-digit year (e.g. 2010).

     hh     Is the two-digit hour (00-23).

     mm     Is the two-digit minutes (00-59).

     ss     Is the two-digit seconds (00-60).

     [+-]zzzz
	    Is	the time zone offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).  `+'
	    indicates that the time is ahead of (i.e., east of) UTC and `-'  in-
	    dicates  that the time is behind (i.e., west of) UTC.  The first two
	    digits indicate the hour difference from UTC and the last two digits
	    indicate the number of additional minutes difference from UTC.   The
	    last two digits must be in the range 00-59.

     The  first  "title"  line with the package name must start at the left hand
     margin.  The "trailer" line with the maintainer and date  details	must  be
     preceded by exactly one space.  The maintainer details and the date must be
     separated by exactly two spaces.

     Any line that consists entirely (i.e., no leading whitespace) of # or /* */
     style comments or RCS keywords.

     Vim  modelines or Emacs local variables, and ancient changelog entries with
     other formats at the end of the file should be accepted  and  preserved  on
     output,  but  their contents might be otherwise ignored and parsing stopped
     at that point.

     The entire changelog must be encoded in UTF-8.

FILES
     debian/changelog

EXAMPLES
     dpkg (1.17.18) unstable; urgency=low

       [ Guillem Jover ]
       * Handle empty minimum versions when initializing dependency versions,
	 as the code is mapping the minimum version 0 to '' to avoid outputting
	 useless versions. Regression introduced in dpkg 1.17.17. Closes: #764929

       [ Updated programs translations ]
       * Catalan (Guillem Jover).

       [ Updated dselect translations ]
       * Catalan (Guillem Jover).
       * German (Sven Joachim).

      -- Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>  Sun, 12 Oct 2014 15:47:44 +0200

SEE ALSO
     deb-version(7), deb-changes(5), dpkg-parsechangelog(1).

1.19.8				   2022-05-24			deb-changelog(5)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=deb-changelog&sektion=5&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+15.1.quarterly>

home | help