9 This manual describes the policy requirements for the Debian
10 distribution. This includes the structure and contents of the Debian
11 archive and several design issues of the operating system, as well as
12 technical requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in
15 This manual also describes Debian policy as it relates to creating
16 Debian packages. It is not a tutorial on how to build packages, nor is
17 it exhaustive where it comes to describing the behavior of the packaging
18 system. Instead, this manual attempts to define the interface to the
19 package management system that the developers have to be conversant
22 The footnotes present in this manual are merely informative, and are not
23 part of Debian policy itself.
25 The appendices to this manual are not necessarily normative, either.
26 Please see :doc:`ap-pkg-scope` for more information.
28 In the normative part of this manual, the words *must*, *should* and
29 *may*, and the adjectives *required*, *recommended* and *optional*, are
30 used to distinguish the significance of the various guidelines in this
31 policy document. Packages that do not conform to the guidelines denoted
32 by *must* (or *required*) will generally not be considered acceptable
33 for the Debian distribution. Non-conformance with guidelines denoted by
34 *should* (or *recommended*) will generally be considered a bug, but will
35 not necessarily render a package unsuitable for distribution. Guidelines
36 denoted by *may* (or *optional*) are truly optional and adherence is
37 left to the maintainer's discretion.
39 These classifications are roughly equivalent to the bug severities
40 *serious* (for *must* or *required* directive violations), *minor*,
41 *normal* or *important* (for *should* or *recommended* directive
42 violations) and *wishlist* (for *optional* items). [#]_
44 Much of the information presented in this manual will be useful even
45 when building a package which is to be distributed in some other way or
46 is intended for local use only.
48 udebs (stripped-down binary packages used by the Debian Installer) do
49 not comply with all of the requirements discussed here. See the `Debian
51 manual <https://d-i.alioth.debian.org/doc/internals/ch03.html>`_ for
52 more information about them.
56 New versions of this document
57 -----------------------------
59 This manual is distributed via the Debian package
60 `debian-policy <https://packages.debian.org/debian-policy>`_.
62 The current version of this document is also available from the Debian
63 web mirrors at https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/. Also
64 available from the same directory are several other formats:
66 <https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/policy.epub>`_,
68 <https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/policy.txt>`_ and
70 <https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/policy.pdf>`_. Included
71 in both the same directory and in the debian-policy package is a
72 standalone copy of :doc:`upgrading-checklist`, which indicates policy
73 changes between versions of this document.
77 Authors and Maintainers
78 -----------------------
80 Originally called "Debian GNU/Linux Policy Manual", this manual was
81 initially written in 1996 by Ian Jackson. It was revised on November
82 27th, 1996 by David A. Morris. Christian Schwarz added new sections on
83 March 15th, 1997, and reworked/restructured it in April-July 1997.
84 Christoph Lameter contributed the "Web Standard". Julian Gilbey largely
85 restructured it in 2001.
87 Since September 1998, the responsibility for the contents of this
88 document lies on the `debian-policy mailing
89 list <mailto:debian-policy@lists.debian.org>`_. Proposals are discussed
90 there and inserted into policy after a certain consensus is established.
91 The current policy process is described in an appendix,
92 :doc:`ap-process`. The actual editing is done by a group
93 of maintainers that have no editorial powers. These are the current
104 While the authors of this document have tried hard to avoid typos and
105 other errors, these do still occur. If you discover an error in this
106 manual or if you want to give any comments, suggestions, or criticisms
107 please send an email to the Debian Policy Mailing List,
108 debian-policy@lists.debian.org, or submit a bug report against the
109 ``debian-policy`` package.
111 Please do not try to reach the individual authors or maintainers of the
112 Policy Manual regarding changes to the Policy.
119 There are several other documents other than this Policy Manual that are
120 necessary to fully understand some Debian policies and procedures.
122 The external "sub-policy" documents are referred to in:
126 - :ref:`s-virtual-pkg`
132 - :ref:`s-maintscriptprompt`
136 In addition to those, which carry the weight of policy, there is the
137 Debian Developer's Reference. This document describes procedures and
138 resources for Debian developers, but it is *not* normative; rather, it
139 includes things that don't belong in the Policy, such as best practices
142 The Developer's Reference is available in the developers-reference
143 package. It's also available from the Debian web mirrors at
144 https://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/.
146 Finally, a :ref:`specification for machine-readable copyright files
147 <s-copyrightformat>` is maintained as part of the debian-policy
148 package using the same procedure as the other policy documents. Use of
149 this format is optional.
156 The following terms are used in this Policy Manual:
159 The character encoding specified by ANSI X3.4-1986 and its
160 predecessor standards, referred to in MIME as US-ASCII, and
161 corresponding to an encoding in eight bits per character of the
162 first 128 `Unicode <http://www.unicode.org/>`_ characters, with the
163 eighth bit always zero.
166 The transformation format (sometimes called encoding) of
167 `Unicode <http://www.unicode.org/>`_ defined by `RFC
168 3629 <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3629.txt>`__. UTF-8 has the
169 useful property of having ASCII as a subset, so any text encoded in
170 ASCII is trivially also valid UTF-8.
173 Informally, the criteria used for inclusion is that the material meet
174 one of the following requirements:
177 The material presented represents an interface to the packaging
178 system that is mandated for use, and is used by, a significant
179 number of packages, and therefore should not be changed without
180 peer review. Package maintainers can then rely on this interface
181 not changing, and the package management software authors need to
182 ensure compatibility with this interface definition. (Control
183 file and changelog file formats are examples.)
186 If there are a number of technically viable choices that can be
187 made, but one needs to select one of these options for
188 inter-operability. The version number format is one example.
190 Please note that these are not mutually exclusive; selected
191 conventions often become parts of standard interfaces.
194 Compare RFC 2119. Note, however, that these words are used in a
195 different way in this document.