dwww Home | Manual pages | Find package

deb822(5)                         dpkg suite                         deb822(5)

NAME
       deb822 - Debian RFC822 control data format

DESCRIPTION
       The package management system manipulates data represented in a common
       format, known as control data, stored in control files.  Control files
       are used for source packages, binary packages and the .changes files
       which control the installation of uploaded files (dpkg's internal
       databases are in a similar format).

SYNTAX
       A control file consists of one or more stanzas of fields (the stanzas
       sometimes used to be referred to as paragraphs).  The stanzas are
       separated by empty lines.  Parsers may accept lines consisting solely
       of U+0020 SPACE and U+0009 TAB as stanza separators, but control files
       should use empty lines.  Some control files allow only one stanza;
       others allow several, in which case each stanza usually refers to a
       different package.  (For example, in source packages, the first stanza
       refers to the source package, and later stanzas refer to binary
       packages generated from the source.)  The ordering of the stanzas in
       control files is significant.

       Each stanza consists of a series of data fields.  Each field consists
       of the field name followed by a colon (U+003A ‘:’), and then the
       data/value associated with that field.  The field name is composed of
       US-ASCII characters excluding control characters, space, and colon
       (i.e., characters in the ranges U+0021 ‘!’ through U+0039 ‘9’, and
       U+003B ‘;’ through U+007E ‘~’, inclusive).  Field names must not begin
       with the comment character (U+0023 ‘#’), nor with the hyphen character
       (U+002D ‘-’).

       The field ends at the end of the line or at the end of the last
       continuation line (see below).  Horizontal whitespace (U+0020 SPACE and
       U+0009 TAB) may occur immediately before or after the value and is
       ignored there; it is conventional to put a single space after the
       colon.  For example, a field might be:

        Package: dpkg

       the field name is Package and the field value dpkg.

       Empty field values are only permitted in source package control files
       (debian/control).  Such fields are ignored.

       A stanza must not contain more than one instance of a particular field
       name.

       There are three types of fields:

           simple
               The field, including its value, must be a single line.  Folding
               of the field is not permitted.  This is the default field type
               if the definition of the field does not specify a different
               type.

           folded
               The value of a folded field is a logical line that may span
               several lines.  The lines after the first are called
               continuation lines and must start with a U+0020 SPACE or a
               U+0009 TAB.  Whitespace, including any newlines, is not
               significant in the field values of folded fields.

               This folding method is similar to RFC5322, allowing control
               files that contain only one stanza and no multiline fields to
               be read by parsers written for RFC5322.

           multiline
               The value of a multiline field may comprise multiple
               continuation lines.  The first line of the value, the part on
               the same line as the field name, often has special significance
               or may have to be empty.  Other lines are added following the
               same syntax as the continuation lines of the folded fields.
               Whitespace, including newlines, is significant in the values of
               multiline fields.

           Whitespace must not appear inside names (of packages,
           architectures, files or anything else) or version numbers, or
           between the characters of multi-character version relationships.

           The presence and purpose of a field, and the syntax of its value
           may differ between types of control files.

           Field names are not case-sensitive, but it is usual to capitalize
           the field names using mixed case as shown below.  Field values are
           case-sensitive unless the description of the field says otherwise.

           Stanza separators (empty lines) and lines consisting only of U+0020
           SPACE and U+0009 TAB, are not allowed within field values or
           between fields.  Empty lines in field values are usually escaped by
           representing them by a U+0020 SPACE followed by a dot (U+002E ‘.’).

           Lines starting with U+0023 ‘#’, without any preceding whitespace
           are comments lines that are only permitted in source package
           control files (debian/control) and in deb-origin(5) files.  These
           comment lines are ignored, even between two continuation lines.
           They do not end logical lines.

           All control files must be encoded in UTF-8.

SEE ALSO
       RFC822, RFC5322.

1.21.22                           2023-05-11                         deb822(5)

Generated by dwww version 1.15 on Sun Jun 16 19:52:35 CEST 2024.