4.10. Variable substitutions: debian/substvars

When dpkg-gencontrol generates binary package control files (DEBIAN/control), it performs variable substitutions on its output just before writing it. Variable substitutions have the form ${variable}. The optional file debian/substvars contains variable substitutions to be used; variables can also be set directly from debian/rules using the -V option to the source packaging commands, and certain predefined variables are also available.

The debian/substvars file is usually generated and modified dynamically by debian/rules targets, in which case it must be removed by the clean target.

See deb-substvars(5) for full details about source variable substitutions, including the format of debian/substvars.