NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FIELDS | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

deb-changes(5)                   dpkg suite                   deb-changes(5)

NAME         top

       deb-changes - Debian changes file format

SYNOPSIS         top

       filename.changes

DESCRIPTION         top

       Each Debian upload is composed of a .changes control file, which
       contains a number of fields.  Each field begins with a tag, such as
       Source or Binary (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 case of the multiline fields Description,
       Changes, Files, Checksums-Sha1 and Checksums-Sha256, see below).
       The control data might be enclosed in an OpenPGP ASCII Armored
       signature, as specified in RFC4880.

FIELDS         top

       Format: format-version (required)
              The value of this field declares the format version of the
              file.  The syntax of the field value is a version number with
              a major and minor component.  Backward incompatible changes to
              the format will bump the major version, and backward
              compatible changes (such as field additions) will bump the
              minor version.  The current format version is 1.8.
       Date: release-date (required)
              The date the package was built or last edited.  It must be in
              the same format as the date in a deb-changelog(5) entry.
              The value of this field is usually extracted from the
              debian/changelog file.
       Source: source-name [(source-version)] (required)
              The name of the source package.  If the source version differs
              from the binary version, then the source-name will be followed
              by a source-version in parenthesis.  This can happen when the
              upload is a binary-only non-maintainer upload.
       Binary: binary-package-list (required)
              This folded field is a space-separated list of binary packages
              to upload.
       Architecture: arch-list
              Lists the architectures of the files currently being uploaded.
              Common architectures are amd64, armel, i386, etc.  Note that
              the all value is meant for packages that are architecture
              independent.  If the source for the package is also being
              uploaded, the special entry source is also present.
              Architecture wildcards must never be present in the list.
       Version: version-string (required)
              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).
       Distribution: distributions (required)
              Lists one or more space-separated distributions where this
              version should be installed when it is uploaded to the
              archive.
       Urgency: urgency (recommended)
              The urgency of the upload.  The currently known values, in
              increasing order of urgency, are: low, medium, high, critical
              and emergency.
       Maintainer: fullname-email (required)
              Should be in the format “Joe Bloggs <jbloggs@example.org>”,
              and is typically the person who created the package, as
              opposed to the author of the software that was packaged.
       Changed-By: fullname-email
              Should be in the format “Joe Bloggs <jbloggs@example.org>”,
              and is typically the person who prepared the package changes
              for this release.
       Description: (recommended)
        binary-package-name - binary-package-summary
              This multiline field contains a list of binary package names
              followed by a space, a dash (‘-’) and their possibly truncated
              short descriptions.
       Closes: bug-number-list
              A space-separated list of bug report numbers that have been
              resolved with this upload.  The distribution archive software
              might use this field to automatically close the referred bug
              numbers in the distribution bug tracking system.
       Binary-Only: yes
              This field denotes that the upload is a binary-only non-
              maintainer build.  It originates from the binary-only=yes
              key/value from the changelog matadata entry.
       Changes: (required)
        changelog-entries
              This multiline field contains the concatenated text of all
              changelog entries that are part of the upload.  To make this a
              valid multiline field empty lines are replaced with a single
              full stop (‘.’) and all lines are indented by one space
              character.  The exact content depends on the changelog format.
       Files: (required)
        md5sum size section priority filename
              This multiline field contains a list of files with an md5sum,
              size, section and priority for each one.
              The first line of the field value (the part on the same line
              as the field name followed by a colon) is always empty.  The
              content of the field is expressed as continuation lines, one
              line per file.  Each line consists of space-separated entries
              describing the file: the md5sum, the file size, the file
              section, the file priority, and the file name.
              This field lists all files that make up the upload.  The list
              of files in this field must match the list of files in the
              other related Checksums fields.
       Checksums-Sha1: (required)
       Checksums-Sha256: (required)
        checksum size filename
              These multiline fields contain a list of files with a checksum
              and size for each one.  These fields have the same syntax and
              differ only in the checksum algorithm used: SHA-1 for
              Checksums-Sha1 and SHA-256 for Checksums-Sha256.
              The first line of the field value (the part on the same line
              as the field name followed by a colon) is always empty.  The
              content of the field is expressed as continuation lines, one
              line per file.  Each line consists of space-separated entries
              describing the file: the checksum, the file size, and the file
              name.
              These fields list all files that make up the upload.  The list
              of files in these fields must match the list of files in the
              Files field and the other related Checksums fields.

BUGS         top

       The Files field is inconsistent with the other Checksums fields.  The
       Change-By and Maintainer fields have confusing names.  The
       Distribution field contains information about what is commonly
       referred to as a suite.

SEE ALSO         top

       deb-src-control(5), deb-version(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                   deb-changes(5)

Pages that refer to this page: dpkg-genchanges(1)deb-buildinfo(5)deb-changelog(5)deb-src-control(5)