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deb-control(5)                    dpkg suite                    deb-control(5)

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

SYNOPSIS
       DEBIAN/control

DESCRIPTION
       Each Debian binary package contains a control file in its control
       member, and its deb822(5) format is a subset of the master
       debian/control file in Debian source packages, see deb-src-control(5).

       This file contains a number of fields.  Each field begins with a tag,
       such as Package or Version (case insensitive), followed by a colon, and
       the body of the field (case sensitive unless stated otherwise).  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).

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

       Package-Type: deb|udeb|type
           This field defines the type of the package.  udeb is for size-
           constrained packages used by the debian installer.  deb is the
           default value, it is assumed if the field is absent.  More types
           might be added in the future.

       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(7).

       Maintainer: fullname-email (recommended)
           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 (recommended)
        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.

       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.

       The Section and Priority fields usually have a defined set of accepted
       values based on the specific distribution policy.

       Installed-Size: size
           The approximate total size of the package's installed files, in KiB
           units.  The algorithm to compute the size is described in
           deb-substvars(5).

       Protected: yes|no
           This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes.  It
           denotes a package that is required mostly for proper booting of the
           system or used for custom system-local meta-packages.  dpkg(1) or
           any other installation tool will not allow a Protected package to
           be removed (at least not without using one of the force options).

           Supported since dpkg 1.20.1.

       Essential: yes|no
           This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes.  It
           denotes a package that is required for the packaging system, for
           proper operation of the system in general or during boot (although
           the latter should be converted to Protected field instead).
           dpkg(1) or any other installation tool will not allow an Essential
           package to be removed (at least not without using one of the force
           options).

       Build-Essential: yes|no
           This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes, and is
           commonly injected by the archive software.  It denotes a package
           that is required when building other packages.

       Architecture: arch|all (required)
           The architecture specifies which type of hardware this package was
           compiled for.  Common architectures are amd64, armel, i386,
           powerpc, etc.  Note that the all value 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: no|same|foreign|allowed
           This field is used to indicate how this package should behave on a
           multi-arch installations.

           no  This value is the default when the field is omitted, in which
               case adding the field with an explicit no value is generally
               not needed.

           same
               This 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.

           foreign
               This 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).

           allowed
               This allows reverse-dependencies to indicate in their Depends
               field that they accept this package from a foreign architecture
               by qualifying the package name with :any, but has no effect
               otherwise.

       Source: source-name [(source-version)]
           The name of the source package that this binary package came from,
           if it is different than the name of the package itself.  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 for example on a binary-only non-maintainer upload, or when
           setting a different binary version via «dpkg-gencontrol -v».

       Subarchitecture: value
       Kernel-Version: value
       Installer-Menu-Item: value
           These fields are used by the debian-installer and are usually not
           needed.  For more details about them, see
           <https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/-/raw/master/doc/devel/modules.txt>.

       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.

       Enhances: package-list
           This is a list of packages that this one enhances.  It is similar
           to Suggests but in the opposite direction.

       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 dependency field lists extra source packages that were used
           during the build of this binary package, for license compliance
           purposes.  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 comma-separated
           list of source package names with strict ‘=’ version relationships
           enclosed within parenthesis.  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.

       Static-Built-Using: package-list
           This dependency field lists extra source packages that were used
           during the build of this binary package, for static building
           purposes (for example linking against static libraries, builds for
           source-centered languages such as Go or Rust, usage of header-only
           C/C++ libraries, injecting data blobs into code, etc.).  This is
           useful to track whether this package might need to be rebuilt when
           source packages listed here have been updated, for example due to
           security updates.  This field must be a comma-separated list of
           source package names with strict ‘=’ version relationships enclosed
           within parenthesis.

           Supported since dpkg 1.21.3.

       Built-For-Profiles: profile-list (obsolete)
           This field used to specify a whitespace separated list of build
           profiles that this binary packages was built with (since dpkg
           1.17.2 until 1.18.18).  The information previously found in this
           field can now be found in the .buildinfo file, which supersedes it.

       Auto-Built-Package: reason-list
           This field specifies a whitespace separated list of reasons why
           this package was auto-generated.  Binary packages marked with this
           field will not appear in the debian/control master source control
           file.  The only currently used reason is debug-symbols.

       Build-Ids: elf-build-id-list
           This field specifies a whitespace separated list of ELF build-ids.
           These are unique identifiers for semantically identical ELF
           objects, for each of these within the package.

           The format or the way to compute each build-id is not defined by
           design.

EXAMPLE
        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).

BUGS
       The Build-Ids field uses a rather generic name out of its original
       context within an ELF object, which serves a very specific purpose and
       executable format.

SEE ALSO
       deb822(5), deb-src-control(5), deb(5), deb-version(7), debtags(1),
       dpkg(1), dpkg-deb(1).

1.21.22                           2023-05-11                    deb-control(5)

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