Debian policy manual

• 1 Introduction and scope of this manual
• 2 Package copyright
• 3 Contents of the binary package
  • 3.1 Control file requirements
  • 3.2 Locations of files
  • 3.3 Permissions and ownerships
  • 3.4 Configuration files
  • 3.5 Maintainer scripts
  • 3.6 Scripts in general
  • 3.7 Shared library packages
  • 3.8 Application configuration files, dotfiles and /etc/skel
  • 3.9 Games
  • 3.10 Allocating package-specific users and groups
  • 3.11 Installation of Emacs-lisp files
  • 3.12 Use of dpkg-divert and update-alternatives
• 4 Configuring and building the programs in the package
  • 4.1 Compilation options
  • 4.2 Packages which can use the X shared libraries
  • 4.3 Mail processing on Debian systems
  • 4.4 Obsolete constructs and libraries: varargs and libtermcap
• 5 Source packaging, changelogs, etc.
  • 5.1 Releases of packages by other than the usual Debian maintainer
  • 5.2 Standards conformance and Standards-Version
  • 5.3 Documentation and the changelog
  • 5.4 Changes to the upstream sources
  • 5.5 Error trapping in makefiles
• 6 Procedure - how to participate in the Debian project
  • 6.1 Before you start work on a package
  • 6.2 When you have a package to upload
  • 6.3 Upload handling - .changes files
  • 6.4 Upload handling - announcements
  • 6.5 The Debian mailing lists
• 7 Conversion procedure from old source packages

This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License with your Debian GNU/Linux system, in /usr/doc/copyright/GPL, or with the dpkg source package as the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.