105

Appendix A

Introduction and scope of these

appendices

These appendices are taken essentially verbatim from the now deprecated Packaging Manual,

version 3.2.1.0. They are the chapters which are likely to be of use to package maintainers and

which have not already been included in the policy document itself. Most of these sections are

very likely not relevant to policy; they should be treated as documentation for the packaging

system. Please note that these appendices are included for convenience, and for historical

reasons: they used to be part of policy package, and they have not yet been incorporated into

dpkg documentation. However, they still have value, and hence they are presented here.

They have not yet been checked to ensure that they are compatible with the contents of policy,

and if there are any contradictions, the version in the main policy document takes precedence.

The remaining chapters of the old Packaging Manual have also not been read in detail to ensure

that there are not parts which have been left out. Both of these will be done in due course.

Certain parts of the Packaging manual were integrated into the Policy Manual proper, and

removed from the appendices. Links have been placed from the old locations to the new ones.

dpkg

is a suite of programs for creating binary package files and installing and removing them

on Unix systems.

1

The binary packages are designed for the management of installed executable programs (usu 

ally compiled binaries) and their associated data, though source code examples and documen 

tation are provided as part of some packages.

This manual describes the technical aspects of creating Debian binary packages (

.deb

files).

It documents the behaviour of the package management programs

dpkg

,

dselect

et al. and

the way they interact with packages.

It also documents the interaction between

dselect

's core and the access method scripts it uses

to actually install the selected packages, and describes how to create a new access method.

This manual does not go into detail about the options and usage of the package building and

installation tools. It should therefore be read in conjunction with those programs' man pages.

1

dpkg

is targeted primarily at Debian GNU/Linux, but may work on or be ported to other systems.