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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FIELDS | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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deb-changes(5) dpkg suite deb-changes(5)
deb-changes - Debian upload changes control file format
filename.changes
Each Debian upload is composed of a .changes control file, which
contains a number of fields in deb822(5) format.
Each field begins with a tag, such as Source or Binary (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 case of the multiline
fields Description, Changes, Files, Checksums-Sha1 and
Checksums-Sha256, see below).
The control data might be enclosed in an OpenPGP ASCII Armored
signature, as specified in RFC9580.
Format: format-version (required)
The value of this field declares the format version of the
file. The syntax of the field value is a version number with
a major and minor component. Backward incompatible changes to
the format will bump the major version, and backward
compatible changes (such as field additions) will bump the
minor version. The current format version is 1.8.
Date: release-date (required)
The date the package was built or last edited. It must be in
the same format as the date in a deb-changelog(5) entry.
The value of this field is usually extracted from the
debian/changelog file.
Source: source-name [(source-version)] (required)
The name of the source package. 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 when the
upload is a binary-only non-maintainer upload.
Binary: binary-package-list (required in context)
This folded field is a space-separated list of binary packages
to upload. If the upload is source-only, then the field is
omitted (since dpkg 1.19.3).
Architecture: arch-list
Lists the architectures of the files currently being uploaded.
Common architectures are amd64, armel, i386, etc. Note that
the all value is meant for packages that are architecture
independent. If the source for the package is also being
uploaded, the special entry source is also present.
Architecture wildcards must never be present in the list.
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).
Note: On some vendors, dpkg has been made to permit native
sources with non-native versions, making this incoherent and
adding to the confusion of the concept, where in addition this
tends to be a trap for accidental mistakes.
Distribution: distributions (required)
Lists one or more space-separated distributions where this
version should be installed when it is uploaded to the
archive.
Urgency: urgency (recommended)
The urgency of the upload. The currently known values, in
increasing order of urgency, are: low, medium, high, critical
and emergency.
Maintainer: fullname-email (required)
Should be in the format “Joe Bloggs <jbloggs@example.org>”,
and is typically the person who created the package, as
opposed to the author of the software that was packaged.
Changed-By: fullname-email
Should be in the format “Joe Bloggs <jbloggs@example.org>”,
and is typically the person who prepared the package changes
for this release.
Description: (recommended)
binary-package-name - binary-package-summary
This multiline field contains a list of binary package names
followed by a space, a dash (‘-’) and their possibly truncated
short descriptions. If the upload is source-only, then the
field is omitted (since dpkg 1.19.3).
Closes: bug-number-list
A space-separated list of bug report numbers for bug reports
that have been resolved with this upload. The distribution
archive software might use this field to automatically close
the referred bug numbers in the distribution bug tracking
system.
Binary-Only: yes
This field denotes that the upload is a binary-only
non-maintainer build. It originates from the binary-only=yes
key/value from the changelog metadata entry.
Built-For-Profiles: profile-list
This field specifies a whitespace separated list of build
profiles that this upload was built with.
Changes: (required)
changelog-entries
This multiline field contains the concatenated text of all
changelog entries that are part of the upload. To make this a
valid multiline field empty lines are replaced with a single
full stop (‘.’) and all lines are indented by one space
character. The exact content depends on the changelog format.
Files: (required)
md5sum size section priority filename
This multiline field contains a list of files with an md5sum,
size, section and priority for each one.
The first line of the field value (the part on the same line
as the field name followed by a colon) is always empty. The
content of the field is expressed as continuation lines, one
line per file. Each line consists of space-separated entries
describing the file: the md5sum, the file size, the file
section, the file priority, and the file name.
If the section or priority are omitted from the package, these
default to unknown and optional respectively (since dpkg
1.22.13).
This field lists all files that make up the upload. The list
of files in this field must match the list of files in the
other related Checksums fields.
Note: The MD5 checksum is considered weak, and should never be
assumed to be sufficient for secure verification, but this
field cannot be omitted as it provides metadata not available
anywhere else.
Checksums-Sha1: (required, weak)
Checksums-Sha256: (required, strong)
checksum size filename
These multiline fields contain a list of files with a checksum
and size for each one. These fields have the same syntax and
differ only in the checksum algorithm used: SHA-1 for
Checksums-Sha1 and SHA-256 for Checksums-Sha256.
The first line of the field value (the part on the same line
as the field name followed by a colon) is always empty. The
content of the field is expressed as continuation lines, one
line per file. Each line consists of space-separated entries
describing the file: the checksum, the file size, and the file
name.
These fields list all files that make up the upload. The list
of files in these fields must match the list of files in the
Files field and the other related Checksums fields.
Note: The SHA-1 checksum is considered weak, and should never
be assumed to be sufficient for secure verification.
The Files field is inconsistent with the other Checksums fields.
The Changed-By and Maintainer fields have confusing names. The
Distribution field contains information about what is commonly
referred to as a suite.
deb822(5), deb-src-control(5), deb-version(7).
This page is part of the dpkg (Debian Package Manager) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=dpkg⟩. This
page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository ⟨git
clone https://git.dpkg.org/git/dpkg/dpkg.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2025-08-06.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
1.22.19-74-gf1ca0 2025-05-18 deb-changes(5)
Pages that refer to this page: dpkg-genchanges(1), deb-buildinfo(5), deb-changelog(5), deb-src-control(5)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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