deb-version(7) dpkg suite deb-version(7)
NAME
deb-version - Debian package version number format
SYNOPSIS
[epoch:]upstream-version[-debian-revision]
DESCRIPTION
Version numbers as used for Debian binary and source packages consist of
three components. These are:
epoch
This is a single (generally small) unsigned integer. It may be
omitted, in which case zero is assumed. If it is omitted then the
upstream-version may not contain any colons.
It is provided to allow mistakes in the version numbers of older
versions of a package, and also a package's previous version
numbering schemes, to be left behind.
upstream-version
This is the main part of the version number. It is usually the
version number of the original (“upstream”) package from which the
.deb file has been made, if this is applicable. Usually this will
be in the same format as that specified by the upstream author(s);
however, it may need to be reformatted to fit into the package
management system's format and comparison scheme.
The comparison behavior of the package management system with
respect to the upstream-version is described below. The upstream-
version portion of the version number is mandatory.
The upstream-version may contain only alphanumerics (“A-Za-z0-9”)
and the characters . + - : ~ (full stop, plus, hyphen, colon, tilde)
and should start with a digit. If there is no debian-revision then
hyphens are not allowed; if there is no epoch then colons are not
allowed.
debian-revision
This part of the version number specifies the version of the Debian
package based on the upstream version. It may contain only
alphanumerics and the characters + . ~ (plus, full stop, tilde) and
is compared in the same way as the upstream-version is.
It is optional; if it isn't present then the upstream-version may
not contain a hyphen. This format represents the case where a piece
of software was written specifically to be turned into a Debian
package, and so there is only one “debianization” of it and
therefore no revision indication is required.
It is conventional to restart the debian-revision at ‘1’ each time
the upstream-version is increased.
Dpkg will break the version number apart at the last hyphen in the
string (if there is one) to determine the upstream-version and
debian-revision. The absence of a debian-revision compares earlier
than the presence of one (but note that the debian-revision is the
least significant part of the version number).
Sorting algorithm
The upstream-version and debian-revision parts are compared by the
package management system using the same algorithm:
The strings are compared from left to right.
First the initial part of each string consisting entirely of non-digit
characters is determined. These two parts (one of which may be empty)
are compared lexically. If a difference is found it is returned. The
lexical comparison is a comparison of ASCII values modified so that all
the letters sort earlier than all the non-letters and so that a tilde
sorts before anything, even the end of a part. For example, the
following parts are in sorted order: ‘~~’, ‘~~a’, ‘~’, the empty part,
‘a’.
Then the initial part of the remainder of each string which consists
entirely of digit characters is determined. The numerical values of
these two parts are compared, and any difference found is returned as
the result of the comparison. For these purposes an empty string (which
can only occur at the end of one or both version strings being compared)
counts as zero.
These two steps (comparing and removing initial non-digit strings and
initial digit strings) are repeated until a difference is found or both
strings are exhausted.
Note that the purpose of epochs is to allow us to leave behind mistakes
in version numbering, and to cope with situations where the version
numbering scheme changes. It is not intended to cope with version
numbers containing strings of letters which the package management
system cannot interpret (such as ‘ALPHA’ or ‘pre-’), or with silly
orderings.
NOTES
The tilde character and its special sorting properties were introduced
in dpkg 1.10 and some parts of the dpkg build scripts only gained
support for it later in the 1.10.x series.
SEE ALSO
deb-control(5), deb(5), dpkg(1)
1.22.21 2025-06-30 deb-version(7)
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