Chapter 3. Binary packages

12

However, in some cases where the upstream version number is based on a date (e.g., a de 

velopment  snapshot  release) the package management system cannot handle these version

numbers without epochs. For example, dpkg will consider  96May01  to be greater than

 96Dec24 .

To prevent having to use epochs for every new upstream version, the date based portion of

the version number should be changed to the following format in such cases:  19960501 ,

 19961224 . It is up to the maintainer whether they want to bother the upstream maintainer to

change the version numbers upstream, too.

Note that other version formats based on dates which are parsed correctly by the package

management system should not be changed.

Native Debian packages (i.e., packages which have been written especially for Debian) whose

version numbers include dates should always use the  YYYYMMDD  format.

3.3 The maintainer of a package

Every package must have a Debian maintainer (the maintainer may be one person or a group

of people reachable from a common email address, such as a mailing list). The maintainer is

responsible for ensuring that the package is placed in the appropriate distributions.

The maintainer must be specified in the

Maintainer

control field with their correct name and

a working email address. If one person maintains several packages, they should try to avoid

having different forms of their name and email address in the

Maintainer

fields of those

packages.

The format of the

Maintainer

control field is described in `

Maintainer

' on page

30

.

If the maintainer of a package quits from the Debian project,  Debian QA Group