deb-changelog(5) dpkg suite deb-changelog(5)
NAME
deb-changelog - dpkg source packages' changelog file format
SYNOPSIS
debian/changelog
DESCRIPTION
Changes in the packaged version of a project are explained in the
changelog file debian/changelog. This includes modifications made in
the source package compared to the upstream one as well as other changes
and updates to the package.
The format of the debian/changelog allows the package building tools to
discover which version of the package is being built and find out other
release-specific information.
That format is a series of entries like this:
package (version) distributions; metadata
[optional blank line(s), stripped]
* change-details
more-change-details
[blank line(s), included in dpkg-parsechangelog(1) output]
* even-more-change-details
[optional blank line(s), stripped]
-- maintainer-name <email-address> date
package and version are the source package name and version number.
version is delimited by parenthesis U+00028 ‘(’ and U+0029 ‘)’.
distributions lists one or more space-separated distributions where this
version should be installed when it is uploaded; it is copied to the
Distribution field in the .changes file. distributions must be
terminated by a semicolon (U+003B ‘;’).
metadata lists zero or more comma-separated keyword=value items. Each
keyword can contain only minus and case insensitive alphanumeric
characters, as they need to be mapped to deb822(5) field names. The
only keywords currently supported by dpkg are:
urgency
Its value is used for the Urgency field in the .changes file for the
upload.
binary-only
With a yes value, it is used to denote that this changelog entry is
for a binary-only non-maintainer upload (an automatic binary rebuild
with the only change being the changelog entry).
The change details may in fact be any series of lines starting with at
least two spaces (U+0020 SPACE), but conventionally each change starts
with an asterisk and a separating space and continuation lines are
indented so as to bring them in line with the start of the text above.
Blank lines may be used here to separate groups of changes, if desired.
If this upload resolves bugs recorded in the distribution bug tracking
system, they may be automatically closed on the inclusion of this
package into the distribution archive by including the string:
Closes: #nnnnn
in the change details, where #nnnnn is the bug number. The exact Perl
regular expression is:
/closes:\s*(?:bug)?\#?\s?\d+(?:,\s*(?:bug)?\#?\s?\d+)*/i
That is, the string should consist of the word closes: followed by a
comma-separated list of bug numbers. Bug numbers may be preceded by the
word bug and/or a # sign, as in "Closes: 42, bug#43, #44, bug 45". The
words closes: and bug are not case sensitive. The list of bug numbers
may span multiple lines.
This information is conveyed via the Closes field in the .changes file.
Where, depending on the archive maintenance software, all the bug
numbers listed might get automatically closed.
The maintainer name and email address used in the changelog should be
the details of the person who prepared this release of the package.
They are not necessarily those of the uploader or usual package
maintainer. The information here will be copied to the Changed-By field
in the .changes file, and then later might be used to send an
acknowledgment when the upload has been installed in the distribution
archive.
The date has the following format (compatible and with the same
semantics of RFC2822 and RFC5322, or what «date -R» generates):
day-of-week, dd month yyyy hh:mm:ss +zzzz
where:
day-of-week
Is one of: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun.
dd Is a one- or two-digit day of the month (01-31), where the leading
zero is optional, but conventionally does not get omitted.
month
Is one of: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov,
Dec.
yyyy
Is the four-digit year (e.g. 2010).
hh Is the two-digit hour (00-23).
mm Is the two-digit minutes (00-59).
ss Is the two-digit seconds (00-60).
[+-]zzzz
Is the time zone offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). ‘+’
indicates that the time is ahead of (i.e., east of) UTC and ‘-’
indicates that the time is behind (i.e., west of) UTC. The first
two digits indicate the hour difference from UTC and the last two
digits indicate the number of additional minutes difference from
UTC. The last two digits must be in the range 00-59.
The first “title” line with the package name must start at the left hand
margin. The “trailer” line with the maintainer and date details must be
preceded by exactly one space (U+0020 SPACE). The maintainer details
and the date must be separated by exactly two spaces (U+0020 SPACE).
Each part of the date can be separated by one or more spaces (U+0020
SPACE), except after the comma where it can be separated by zero or more
spaces (U+0020 SPACE).
Any line that consists entirely (i.e., no leading whitespace) of # or /*
*/ style comments or RCS keywords.
Vim modelines or Emacs local variables, and ancient changelog entries
with other formats at the end of the file should be accepted and
preserved on output, but their contents might be otherwise ignored and
parsing stopped at that point.
The entire changelog must be encoded in UTF-8.
FILES
debian/changelog
EXAMPLES
dpkg (1.17.18) unstable; urgency=low
[ Guillem Jover ]
* Handle empty minimum versions when initializing dependency versions,
as the code is mapping the minimum version 0 to '' to avoid outputting
useless versions. Regression introduced in dpkg 1.17.17. Closes: #764929
[ Updated programs translations ]
* Catalan (Guillem Jover).
[ Updated dselect translations ]
* Catalan (Guillem Jover).
* German (Sven Joachim).
-- Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> Sun, 12 Oct 2014 15:47:44 +0200
SEE ALSO
deb822(5), deb-changes(5), deb-version(7), dpkg-parsechangelog(1).
1.22.21 2025-06-30 deb-changelog(5)
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