deb-control(5)

NAME
deb-control - Debian packages' master control file format

SYNOPSIS
control

DESCRIPTION
Each Debian package contains the master control file, which contains a number of fields, or comments when the line starts with ‘#’. Each field begins with a tag, such as Package or Version (case insensitive), followed by a colon, and the body of the field. Fields are delimited only by field tags. In other words, field text may be multiple lines in length, but the installation tools will generally join lines when processing the body of the field (except in the case of the Description field, see below).

REQUIRED FIELDS

Package: package-name
    The value of this field determines the package name, and is used to generate file names by most installation tools.

Version: version-string
    Typically, this is the original package's version number in whatever form the program's author uses. It may also include a Debian revision number (for non-native packages). The exact format and sorting algorithm are described in deb-version(5).

Maintainer: fullname-email
    Should be in the format “Joe Bloggs <jbloggs@foo.com>”, and is typically the person who created the package, as opposed to the author of the software that was packaged.

Description: short-description
long-description
    The format for the package description is a short brief summary on the first line (after the Description field). The following lines should be used as a longer, more detailed description. Each line of the long description must be preceded by a space, and blank lines in the long description must contain a single ‘.’ following the preceding space.

OPTIONAL FIELDS

Section: section
    This is a general field that gives the package a category based on the software that it installs. Some common sections are utils, net, mail, text, x11, etc.

Priority: priority
    Sets the importance of this package in relation to the system as a whole. Common priorities are required, standard, optional, extra, etc.

In Debian, the Section and Priority fields have a defined set of accepted values based on the Policy Manual. A list of these values can be obtained from the latest version of the debian-policy package.

Essential: yes|no
    This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes. It denotes a package that is required for proper operation of the system. Dpkg or any other installation tool will not allow an Essential package to be removed (at least not without using one of the force options).

Architecture: arch|all
    The architecture specifies which type of hardware this package was compiled for. Common architectures are amd64, armel, i386, powerpc, etc. Note that the all option is meant for packages that are architecture independent. Some examples of this are shell and Perl scripts, and documentation.

Origin: name
    The name of the distribution this package is originating from.

Bugs: url
    The url of the bug tracking system for this package. The current used format is bts-type://bts-address, like debbugs://bugs.debian.org.

Homepage: url
    The upstream project home page url.

Tag: tag-list
    List of tags describing the qualities of the package. The description and list of supported tags can be found in the debtags package.

Multi-Arch: same|foreign|allowed|no
    This field is used to indicate how this package should behave on a multi-arch installations. The value same means that the package is co-installable with itself, but it must not be used to satisfy the dependency of any package of a different architecture from itself. The value foreign means that the package is not co-installable with itself, but should be allowed to satisfy a non-arch-qualified dependency of a package of a different arch from itself (if a dependency has an explicit arch-qualifier then the value foreign is ignored). The value allowed allows reverse-dependencies to indicate in their Depends field that they accept a package from a foreign architecture by qualifying the package name with :any, but has no effect otherwise. The value no is the default when the field is omitted, in which case adding the field with an explicit no value is generally not needed.

Source: source-name
    The name of the source package that this binary package came from, if different than the name of the package itself.

Subarchitecture: value
Kernel-Version: value
Installer-Menu-Item: value
    These fields are used by the debian-installer and are usually not needed. See /usr/share/doc/debian-installer/devel/modules.txt from the debian-installer package for more details about them.

Depends: package-list
    List of packages that are required for this package to provide a non-trivial amount of functionality. The package maintenance software will not allow a package to be installed if the packages listed in its Depends field aren't installed (at least not without using the force options). In an installation, the postinst scripts of packages listed in Depends fields are run before those of the packages which depend on them. On the opposite, in a removal, the prerm script of a package is run before those of the packages listed in its Depends field.

Pre-Depends: package-list
    List of packages that must be installed and configured before this one can be installed. This is usually used in the case where this package requires another package for running its preinst script.

Recommends: package-list
    Lists packages that would be found together with this one in all but unusual installations. The package maintenance software will warn the user if they install a package without those listed in its Recommends field.

Suggests: package-list
    Lists packages that are related to this one and can perhaps enhance its usefulness, but without which installing this package is perfectly reasonable.

The syntax of Depends, Pre-Depends, Recommends and Suggests fields is a list of groups of alternative packages. Each group is a list of packages separated by vertical bar (or “pipe”) symbols, ‘|’. The groups are separated by commas. Commas are to be read as “AND”, and pipes as “OR”, with pipes binding more tightly. Each package name is optionally followed by an architecture qualifier appended after a colon ‘:’, optionally followed by a version number specification in parentheses.

An architecture qualifier name can be a real Debian architecture name (since dpkg 1.16.5) or any (since dpkg 1.16.2). If omitted, the default is the current binary package architecture. A real Debian architecture name will match exactly that architecture for that package name, any will match any architecture for that package name if the package has been marked as Multi-Arch: allowed.

A version number may start with a ‘>>’, in which case any later version will match, and may specify or omit the Debian packaging revision (separated by a hyphen). Accepted version relationships are ‘>>’ for greater than, ‘<<’ for less than, ‘>=’ for greater than or equal to, ‘<=’ for less than or equal to, and ‘=’ for equal to.

Breaks: package-list
    Lists packages that this one breaks, for example by exposing bugs when the named packages rely on this one. The package maintenance software will not allow broken packages to be configured; generally the resolution is to upgrade the packages named in a Breaks field.

Conflicts: package-list
    Lists packages that conflict with this one, for example by containing files with the same names. The package maintenance software will not allow conflicting packages to be installed at the same time. Two conflicting packages should each include a Conflicts line mentioning the other.

Replaces: package-list
    List of packages files from which this one replaces. This is used for allowing this package to overwrite the files of another package and is usually used with the Conflicts field to force removal of the other package, if this one also has the same files as the conflicted package.

The syntax of Breaks, Conflicts and Replaces is a list of package names, separated by commas (and optional whitespace). In the Breaks and Conflicts fields, the comma should be read as “OR”. An optional architecture qualifier can also be appended to the package name with the same syntax as above, but the default is any instead of the binary package architecture. An optional version can also be given with the same syntax as above for the Breaks, Conflicts and Replaces fields.

Provides: package-list
    This is a list of virtual packages that this one provides. Usually this is used in the case of several packages all providing the same service. For example, sendmail and exim can serve as a mail server, so they provide a common package (“mail-transport-agent”) on which other packages can depend. This will allow sendmail or exim to serve as a valid option to satisfy the dependency. This prevents the packages that depend on a mail server from having to know the package names for all of them, and using ‘|’ to separate the list.

The syntax of Provides is a list of package names, separated by commas (and optional whitespace). An optional architecture qualifier can also be appended to the package name with the same syntax as above. If omitted, the default is the current binary package architecture. An optional exact (equal to) version can also be given with the same syntax as above (honored since dpkg 1.17.11).

Built-Using: package-list
    This field lists extra source packages that were used during the build of this binary package. This is an indication to the archive maintenance software that these extra source packages must be kept whilst this binary package is maintained. This field must be a list of source package names with strict ‘=’ version relationships. Note that the archive maintenance software is likely to refuse to accept an upload which declares a Built-Using relationship which cannot be satisfied within the archive.

EXAMPLE
# Comment
Package: grep
Essential: yes
Priority: required
Section: base
Maintainer: Wichert Akkerman <wakkerma@debian.org>
Architecture: sparc
Version: 2.4-1
Pre-Depends: libc6 (>= 2.0.105)
Provides: rgrep
Conflicts: rgrep
Description: GNU grep, egrep and fgrep.
 The GNU family of grep utilities may be the "fastest grep in the west".
 GNU grep is based on a fast lazy-state deterministic matcher (about
 twice as fast as stock Unix egrep) hybridized with a Boyer-Moore-Gosper
 search for a fixed string that eliminates impossible text from being
 considered by the full regexp matcher without necessarily having to
 look at every character. The result is typically many times faster
 than Unix grep or egrep. (Regular expressions containing backreferencing
 will run more slowly, however).

SEE ALSO
deb(5), deb-version(5), debtags(1), dpkg(1), dpkg-deb(1).