Chapter 4. Source packages

22

field in the

.changes

file (see `

Closes

' on page

38

).

The maintainer name and email address used in the changelog should be the details of the

person uploading this version. They are not necessarily those of the usual package main 

tainer. The information here will be copied to the

Changed By

field in the

.changes

file

(see `

Changed By

' on page

31

), and then later used to send an acknowledgement when the

upload has been installed.

The date should be in RFC822 format

8

; it should include the time zone specified numerically,

with the time zone name or abbreviation optionally present as a comment in parentheses.

The first  title  line with the package name should start at the left hand margin; the  trailer 

line with the maintainer and date details should be preceded by exactly one space. The main 

tainer details and the date must be separated by exactly two spaces.

For more information on placement of the changelog files within binary packages, please see

`Changelog files' on page

102

.

4.4.1 Alternative changelog formats

In non experimental packages you must use a format for

debian/changelog

which is sup 

ported by the most recent released version of

dpkg

.

It is possible to use a format different from the standard one by providing a changelog parser

for the format you wish to use. The parser must have an API compatible with that expected by

dpkg genchanges

and

dpkg gencontrol

, and it must not interact with the user at all.

9

4.5 Error trapping in makefiles

When

make

invokes a command in a makefile (including your package's upstream makefiles

and

debian/rules

), it does so using

sh

. This means that

sh

's usual bad error handling

properties apply: if you include a miniature script as one of the commands in your makefile

you'll find that if you don't do anything about it then errors are not detected and

make

will

blithely continue after problems.

Every time you put more than one shell command (this includes using a loop) in a makefile

command you must make sure that errors are trapped. For simple compound commands,

such as changing directory and then running a program, using

&&

rather than semicolon as

a command separator is sufficient. For more complex commands including most loops and

conditionals you should include a separate

set  e

command at the start of every makefile

command that's actually one of these miniature shell scripts.

8

This is generated by the

822 date

program.

9

If there is general interest in the new format, you should contact the

dpkg

maintainer to have the parser script

for it included in the

dpkg

package. (You will need to agree that the parser and its man page may be distributed

under the GNU GPL, just as the rest of

dpkg

is.)