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, hyphens
       and colons and start with an alphanumeric. 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 build architecture (from dpkg --print-architecture).

       source:Version
              The source package version.

       source:Upstream-Version
              The upstream source package version, including the Debian version epoch if any.

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

       Source-Version
              The source package version (from the changelog file). This  variable  is  now  deprecated  as  its
              meaning  is  different  from  its  function,  please  use  the source:Version or binary:Version as
              appropriate.

       Installed-Size
              The 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 isn't set
              dpkg-gencontrol will use du -k debian/tmp to find the default value.

       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.

       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.

       dpkg:Version
              The full version of dpkg.

       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).

Debian Project                                     2009-07-15                                   deb-substvars(5)