bionic (5) deb-changelog.5.gz

Provided by: dpkg-dev_1.19.0.5ubuntu2.4_all bug

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).