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 release-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 Distribution field in the .changes
       file.

       metadata is a comma-separated list of keyword=value items.  The  only  keywords  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 system, 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 information  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  information  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 ‘-’ indicates 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, RCS keywords, Vim modelines or Emacs local variables should be ignored.

       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).