NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CHANGELOG FORMATS | NOTES | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

dpkg-parsechangelog(1)           dpkg suite           dpkg-parsechangelog(1)

NAME         top

       dpkg-parsechangelog - parse Debian changelog files

SYNOPSIS         top

       dpkg-parsechangelog [option...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       dpkg-parsechangelog reads and parses the changelog of an unpacked
       Debian source tree and outputs the information in it to standard
       output in a machine-readable form.

OPTIONS         top

       -l changelog-file
              Specifies the changelog file to read information from.  A ‘-’
              can be used to specify reading from standard input.  The
              default is debian/changelog.
       -F changelog-format
              Specifies the format of the changelog. By default the format
              is read from a special line near the bottom of the changelog
              or failing that defaults to the debian standard format. See
              also CHANGELOG FORMATS.
       -L libdir
              Obsolete option without effect (since dpkg 1.18.8).  Setting
              the perl environment variables PERL5LIB or PERLLIB has a
              similar effect when looking for the parser perl modules.
       -S, --show-field field
              Specifies the name of the field to show (since dpkg 1.17.0).
              The field name is not printed, only its value.
       -?, --help
              Show the usage message and exit.
       --version
              Show the version and exit.
   Parser Options
       The following options can be used to influence the output of the
       changelog parser, e.g. the range of entries or the format of the
       output.
       --file file
              Set the changelog filename to parse.  Default is ‘-’ (standard
              input).
       -l, --label file
              Set the name of the changelog file to use in error messages,
              instead of using the name from the --file option, or its
              default value.
       --format output-format
              Set the output format. Currently supported values are dpkg and
              rfc822.  dpkg is the classic output format (from before this
              option existed) and the default. It consists of one paragraph
              in Debian control format (see deb-control(5)). If more than
              one entry is requested, then most fields are taken from the
              most recent entry, except otherwise stated:
              Source: pkg-name
              Version: version
              Distribution: target-distribution
              Urgency: urgency
                     The highest urgency of all included entries is used,
                     followed by the concatenated (space-separated) comments
                     from all the versions requested.
              Maintainer: author
              Date: date
                     The date of the entry as a string, as it appears in the
                     changelog.  With a strptime(3) format "%a, %d %b %Y %T
                     %z", but where the day of the week might not actually
                     correspond to the real day obtained from the rest of
                     the date string.  If you need a more accurate
                     representation of the date, use the Timestamp field,
                     but take into account it might not be possible to map
                     it back to the exact value in this field.
              Timestamp: timestamp
                     The date of the entry as a timestamp in seconds since
                     the epoch (since dpkg 1.18.8).
              Closes: bug-number
                     The Closes fields of all included entries are merged.
              Changes: changelog-entries
                     The text of all changelog entries is concatenated. To
                     make this field a valid Debian control format multiline
                     field empty lines are replaced with a single full stop
                     and all lines is intended by one space character. The
                     exact content depends on the changelog format.
              The Version, Distribution, Urgency, Maintainer and Changes
              fields are mandatory.
              There might be additional user-defined fields present.
              The rfc822 format uses the same fields but outputs a separate
              paragraph for each changelog entry so that all metadata for
              each entry is preserved.
       --all  Include all changes. Note: other options have no effect when
              this is in use.
       -s, --since version
       -v version
              Include all changes later than version.
       -u, --until version
              Include all changes earlier than version.
       -f, --from version
              Include all changes equal or later than version.
       -t, --to version
              Include all changes up to or equal than version.
       -c, --count number
       -n number
              Include number entries from the top (or the tail if number is
              lower than 0).
       -o, --offset number
              Change the starting point for --count, counted from the top
              (or the tail if number is lower than 0).

CHANGELOG FORMATS         top

       It is possible to use a different format to the standard one, by
       providing a parser for that alternative format.
       In order to have dpkg-parsechangelog run the new parser, a line must
       be included within the last 40 lines of the changelog file, matching
       the Perl regular expression: “\schangelog-format:\s+([0-9a-z]+)\W”.
       The part in parentheses should be the name of the format. For
       example:
              @@@ changelog-format: otherformat @@@
       Changelog format names are non-empty strings of alphanumerics.
       If such a line exists then dpkg-parsechangelog will look for the
       parser as a Dpkg::Changelog::Otherformat perl module; it is an error
       for it not being present.  The parser name in the perl module will be
       automatically capitalized.  The default changelog format is debian,
       and a parser for it is provided by default.
       The parser should be derived from the Dpkg::Changelog class and
       implement the required documented interface.
       If the changelog format which is being parsed always or almost always
       leaves a blank line between individual change notes, these blank
       lines should be stripped out, so as to make the resulting output
       compact.
       If the changelog format does not contain date or package name
       information this information should be omitted from the output. The
       parser should not attempt to synthesize it or find it from other
       sources.
       If the changelog does not have the expected format the parser should
       error out, rather than trying to muddle through and possibly
       generating incorrect output.
       A changelog parser may not interact with the user at all.

NOTES         top

       All Parser Options except for -v are only supported since dpkg
       1.14.16.
       Short option parsing with non-bundled values available only since
       dpkg 1.18.0.

FILES         top

       debian/changelog
              The changelog file, used to obtain version-dependent
              information about the source package, such as the urgency and
              distribution of an upload, the changes made since a particular
              release, and the source version number itself.

SEE ALSO         top

       deb-changelog(5).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the dpkg (Debian Package Manager) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/⟩.  If you have a bug report for
       this manual page, see 
       ⟨http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=dpkg⟩.  This page
       was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository 
       ⟨git://git.debian.org/git/dpkg/dpkg.git⟩ on 2017-07-05.  If you dis‐
       cover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or
       you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
       to man-pages@man7.org
1.18.15-3-ga2ef                  1970-01-01           dpkg-parsechangelog(1)

Pages that refer to this page: dpkg-genbuildinfo(1)dpkg-genchanges(1)dpkg-gencontrol(1)dpkg-source(1)deb-changelog(5)