Chapter 5. Control files and their fields

35

  Those starting with two or more spaces. These will be displayed verbatim. If the display

cannot be panned horizontally, the displaying program will line wrap them  hard  (i.e.,

without taking account of word breaks). If it can they will be allowed to trail off to

the right. None, one or two initial spaces may be deleted, but the number of spaces

deleted from each line will be the same (so that you can have indenting work correctly,

for example).

  Those containing a single space followed by a single full stop character. These are ren 

dered as blank lines. This is the only way to get a blank line

8

.

  Those containing a space, a full stop and some more characters. These are for future

expansion. Do not use them.

Do not use tab characters. Their effect is not predictable.

See `The description of a package' on page

12

for further information on this.

In a

.changes

file, the

Description

field contains a summary of the descriptions for the

packages being uploaded.

The part of the field before the first newline is empty; thereafter each line has the name of

a binary package and the summary description line from that binary package. Each line is

indented by one space.

5.6.14

Distribution

In a

.changes

file or parsed changelog output this contains the (space separated) name(s) of

the distribution(s) where this version of the package should be installed. Valid distributions

are determined by the archive maintainers.

9

8

Completely empty lines will not be rendered as blank lines. Instead, they will cause the parser to think you're

starting a whole new record in the control file, and will therefore likely abort with an error.

9

Current distribution names are:

stable This is the current  released  version of Debian GNU/Linux. Once the distribution is stable only security

fixes and other major bug fixes are allowed. When changes are made to this distribution, the release number

is increased (for example: 2.2r1 becomes 2.2r2 then 2.2r3, etc).

unstable This distribution value refers to the developmental part of the Debian distribution tree. New packages,

new upstream versions of packages and bug fixes go into the unstable directory tree. Download from this

distribution at your own risk.

testing This distribution value refers to the testing part of the Debian distribution tree. It receives its packages from

the unstable distribution after a short time lag to ensure that there are no major issues with the unstable

packages. It is less prone to breakage than unstable, but still risky. It is not possible to upload packages

directly to testing.

frozen From time to time, the testing distribution enters a state of  code freeze  in anticipation of release as a stable

version. During this period of testing only fixes for existing or newly discovered bugs will be allowed. The

exact details of this stage are determined by the Release Manager.

experimental The packages with this distribution value are deemed by their maintainers to be high risk. Often 

times they represent early beta or developmental packages from various sources that the maintainers want

people to try, but are not ready to be a part of the other parts of the Debian distribution tree. Download at

your own risk.

You should list all distributions that the package should be installed into. More information is available in the

Debian Developer's Reference, section  The Debian archive .