Chapter 1. About this manual

2

These classifications are roughly equivalent to the bug severities serious (for must or required

directive violations), minor, normal or important (for should or recommended directive violations)

and wishlist (for optional items).

2

Much of the information presented in this manual will be useful even when building a package

which is to be distributed in some other way or is intended for local use only.

1.2 New versions of this document

This manual is distributed via the Debian package

debian policy (

http://packages.

debian.org/debian policy

)

(

packages.debian.org

/debian policy

).

The current version of this document is also available from the Debian web mirrors at

/doc/debian policy/ (

http://www.debian.org/doc/debian policy/

)

. (

www.

debian.org

/doc/debian policy/

) Also available from the same directory are several

other formats:

policy.html.tar.gz

(

/doc/debian policy/policy.html.tar.gz

),

policy.pdf.gz

(

/doc/debian policy/policy.pdf.gz

) and

policy.ps.gz

(

/doc/

debian policy/policy.ps.gz

).

The

debian policy

package also includes the file

upgrading checklist.txt

which in 

dicates policy changes between versions of this document.

1.3 Authors and Maintainers

Originally called  Debian GNU/Linux Policy Manual , this manual was initially written in

1996 by Ian Jackson. It was revised on November 27th, 1996 by David A. Morris. Christian

Schwarz added new sections on March 15th, 1997, and reworked/restructured it in April July

1997. Christoph Lameter contributed the  Web Standard . Julian Gilbey largely restructured

it in 2001.

Since September 1998, the responsibility for the contents of this document lies on the debian 

policy mailing list (

mailto:debian policy@lists.debian.org

). Proposals are dis 

cussed there and inserted into policy after a certain consensus is established. The actual editing

is done by a group of maintainers that have no editorial powers. These are the current main 

tainers:

1 Julian Gilbey

2 Branden Robinson

3 Josip Rodin

4 Manoj Srivastava

2

Compare RFC 2119. Note, however, that these words are used in a different way in this document.