1.8. Documentation and information

The following packages provide information for maintainers or help with building documentation.

1.8.1. debian-policy

The debian-policy package contains the Debian Policy Manual and related documents, which are:

  • Debian Policy Manual

  • Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS)

  • Debian Menu sub-policy

  • Debian Perl sub-policy

  • Debian configuration management specification

  • Machine-readable debian/copyright specification

  • Autopkgtest - automatic as-installed package testing

  • Authoritative list of virtual package names

  • Policy checklist for upgrading your packages

The Debian Policy Manual the policy relating to packages and details of the packaging mechanism. It covers everything from required gcc options to the way the maintainer scripts (postinst etc.) work, package sections and priorities, etc.

Also useful is the file /usr/share/doc/debian-policy/upgrading-checklist.txt.gz, which lists changes between versions of policy.

1.8.2. doc-debian

doc-debian contains lots of useful Debian-specific documentation:

  • Debian Linux Manifesto

  • Constitution for the Debian Project

  • Debian Social Contract

  • Debian Free Software Guidelines

  • Debian Bug Tracking System documentation

  • Introduction to the Debian mailing lists

1.8.3. developers-reference

The developers-reference package contains the document you are reading right now, the Debian Developer’s Reference, a set of guidelines and best practices which has been established by and for the community of Debian developers.

1.8.4. maint-guide

The maint-guide package contains the Debian New Maintainers’ Guide.

This document tries to describe the building of a Debian package to ordinary Debian users and prospective developers. It uses fairly non-technical language, and it’s well covered with working examples.

1.8.5. packaging-tutorial

This tutorial is an introduction to Debian packaging. It teaches prospective developers how to modify existing packages, how to create their own packages, and how to interact with the Debian community.

In addition to the main tutorial, it includes three practical sessions on modifying the grep package, and packaging the gnujump game and a Java library.

1.8.6. how-can-i-help

how-can-i-help shows opportunities for contributing to Debian. how-can-i-help hooks into APT to list opportunities for contributions to Debian (orphaned packages, bugs tagged ‘newcomer’) for packages installed locally, after each APT invocation. It can also be invoked directly, and then lists all opportunities for contribution (not just the new ones).

1.8.7. docbook-xml

docbook-xml provides the DocBook XML DTDs, which are commonly used for Debian documentation (as is the older debiandoc SGML DTD). This manual, for instance, is written in DocBook XML.

The docbook-xsl package provides the XSL files for building and styling the source to various output formats. You will need an XSLT processor, such as xsltproc, to use the XSL stylesheets. Documentation for the stylesheets can be found in the various docbook-xsl-doc-* packages.

To produce PDF from FO, you need an FO processor, such as xmlroff or fop. Another tool to generate PDF from DocBook XML is dblatex.

1.8.8. debiandoc-sgml

debiandoc-sgml provides the DebianDoc SGML DTD, which has been commonly used for Debian documentation, but is now deprecated (docbook-xml or python3-sphinx should be used instead).

1.8.9. debian-keyring

Contains the public GPG keys of Debian Developers and Maintainers. See Maintaining your public key and the package documentation for more information.

1.8.10. debian-el

debian-el provides an Emacs mode for viewing Debian binary packages. This lets you examine a package without unpacking it.