18

Introduction

After the first public release of Debian, attention was turned toward developing

the package system called dpkg. A rudimentary dpkg existed in Debian 0.91,

but at that time was mostly used for manipulating packages once they were

installed, rather than as a general packaging utility. By the summer of 1994,

early versions of dpkg were becoming usable, and other people besides Ian

began to join in the packaging and integration process by following guidelines

that explained how to construct packages that were modular and integrated

into the system without causing problems.

By the fall of 1994, an overloaded Ian Murdock, now coordinating the efforts

of dozens of people in addition to his own development work, transferred re 

sponsibility of the package system to Ian Jackson, who proceeded to make

many invaluable enhancements, and shaped it into the current system.

After months of hard work and organization, the Debian Project finally made

its first distributed release in March of 1995, Debian 0.93 Release 5. Debian

0.92 had never been released, and Release 1 through Release 4 of Debian 0.93

had been development releases made throughout the fall and winter of 1994.

By this time, the Debian Project, as it had come to be called, had grown to

include over sixty people. In the summer of 1995, Ian Murdock transferred

responsibility of the base system, the core set of Debian packages, to Bruce

Perens, giving Ian time to devote to the management of the growing Project.

Work continued throughout the summer and fall, and a final a.out binary

format release, Debian 0.93 Release 6, was made in November of 1995 before

attention turned to converting the system to the ELF binary format.

Ian Murdock left the Debian Project in March of 1996 to devote more time to

his family and to finishing school; Bruce Perens assumed the leadership role,

guiding the Project through its first ELF release, Debian 1.1, in June 1996.