Provided by: dpkg-dev_1.19.7ubuntu3.2_all bug

NAME

       deb-substvars - Debian source substitution variables

SYNOPSIS

       substvars

DESCRIPTION

       Before  dpkg-source,  dpkg-gencontrol  and dpkg-genchanges write their control information
       (to  the  source  control  file  .dsc  for  dpkg-source  and  to   standard   output   for
       dpkg-gencontrol  and  dpkg-genchanges)  they  perform  some  variable substitutions on the
       output file.

       A variable  substitution  has  the  form  ${variable-name}.   Variable  names  consist  of
       alphanumerics  (a-zA-Z0-9), hyphens (-) and colons (:) and start with an alphanumeric, and
       are case-sensitive, even though they  might  refer  to  other  entities  which  are  case-
       preserving.  Variable substitutions are performed repeatedly until none are left; the full
       text of the field after the substitution is rescanned to look for more substitutions.

       After all the substitutions have been done each occurrence of the string ${} (which is not
       a legal substitution) is replaced with a $ sign.

       While  variable  substitution is done on all control fields, some of those fields are used
       and needed during the build when the substitution did not yet occur. That's why you  can't
       use variables in the Package, Source and Architecture fields.

       Variable  substitution  happens  on the content of the fields after they have been parsed,
       thus if you want a variable to expand over multiple lines you do not  have  to  include  a
       space after the newline. This is done implicitly when the field is output. For example, if
       the variable ${Description} is set to "foo is bar.${Newline}foo is great." and if you have
       the following field:

        Description: foo application
         ${Description}
         .
         More text.

       It will result in:

        Description: foo application
         foo is bar.
         foo is great.
         .
         More text.

       Variables  can  be  set using the -V common option. They can be also specified in the file
       debian/substvars (or whatever other file is specified using  the  -T  option).  This  file
       consists  of lines of the form name=value.  Trailing whitespace on each line, blank lines,
       and lines starting with a # symbol (comments) are ignored.

       Additionally, the following standard variables are available:

       Arch   The current host architecture (i.e. the architecture the  package  is  being  built
              for, the equivalent of DEB_HOST_ARCH).

       source:Version
              The source package version (since dpkg 1.13.19).

       source:Upstream-Version
              The  upstream  source  package  version,  including the Debian version epoch if any
              (since dpkg 1.13.19).

       binary:Version
              The binary package version (which may differ from source:Version in  a  binNMU  for
              example; since dpkg 1.13.19).

       Source-Version
              The source package version (from the changelog file). This variable is now obsolete
              and emits an error when used as its meaning is different from its function,  please
              use the source:Version or binary:Version as appropriate.

       source:Synopsis
              The source package synopsis, extracted from the source stanza Description field, if
              it exists (since dpkg 1.19.0).

       source:Extended-Description
              The  source  package  extended  description,  extracted  from  the  source   stanza
              Description field, if it exists (since dpkg 1.19.0).

       Installed-Size
              The  approximate  total size of the package's installed files. This value is copied
              into the corresponding control file field; setting it will modify the value of that
              field.  If  this variable is not set dpkg-gencontrol will compute the default value
              by accumulating the size of each regular file and symlink rounded  to  1  KiB  used
              units, and a baseline of 1 KiB for any other filesystem object type.

              Note:  Take into account that this can only ever be an approximation, as the actual
              size used on the installed system will depend greatly on the  filesystem  used  and
              its  parameters,  which  might  end  up  using  either  more or less space than the
              specified in this field.

       Extra-Size
              Additional disk space used when the package is installed. If this variable  is  set
              its  value  is added to that of the Installed-Size variable (whether set explicitly
              or using the default value) before it is copied  into  the  Installed-Size  control
              file field.

       S:fieldname
              The  value  of  the  source  stanza  field  fieldname  (which  must be given in the
              canonical capitalisation; since dpkg 1.18.11).   Setting  these  variables  has  no
              effect  other  than  on places where they are expanded explicitly.  These variables
              are only available when generating binary control files.

       F:fieldname
              The value of the output field fieldname (which  must  be  given  in  the  canonical
              capitalisation).  Setting  these variables has no effect other than on places where
              they are expanded explicitly.

       Format The .changes file format version generated by this version of the source  packaging
              scripts.  If you set this variable the contents of the Format field in the .changes
              file will change too.

       Newline, Space, Tab
              These variables each hold the corresponding character.

       shlibs:dependencyfield
              Variable settings with names of this form are generated by dpkg-shlibdeps.

       dpkg:Upstream-Version
              The upstream version of dpkg (since dpkg 1.13.19).

       dpkg:Version
              The full version of dpkg (since dpkg 1.13.19).

       If a variable is referred to but not defined it generates a warning and an empty value  is
       assumed.

FILES

       debian/substvars
              List of substitution variables and values.

SEE ALSO

       dpkg(1), dpkg-genchanges(1), dpkg-gencontrol(1), dpkg-shlibdeps(1), dpkg-source(1).