10.23. Version 3.9.1

Released July, 2010.

3.2.1

Date-based version components should be given as the four-digit year, two-digit month, and then two-digit day, but may have embedded punctuation.

3.9

Maintainer scripts must pass --package to dpkg-divert when creating or removing diversions and must not use --local.

4.10

Only dpkg-gencontrol supports variable substitution. dpkg-genchanges (for *.changes) and dpkg-source (for *.dsc) do not.

7.1

Architecture restrictions and wildcards are also allowed in binary package relationships provided that the binary package is not architecture-independent.

7.4

Conflicts and Breaks should only be used when there are file conflicts or one package breaks the other, not just because two packages provide similar functionality but don’t interfere.

8.1

The SONAME of a library should change whenever the ABI of the library changes in a way that isn’t backward-compatible. It should not change if the library ABI changes are backward-compatible. Discourage bundling shared libraries together in one package.

8.4

Ada Library Information (*.ali) files must be installed read-only.

8.6.1, 8.6.2, 8.6.5

Packages should normally not include a shlibs.local file since we now have complete shlibs coverage.

8.6.3

The SONAME of a library may instead be of the form name-major-version.so.

10.2

Libtool .la files should not be installed for public libraries. If they’re required (for libltdl, for instance), the dependency_libs setting should be emptied. Library packages historically including .la files must continue to include them (with dependency_libs emptied) until all libraries that depend on that library have removed or emptied their .la files.

10.2

Libraries no longer need to be built with -D_REENTRANT, which was an obsolete LinuxThreads requirement. Instead, say explicitly that libraries should be built with threading support and to be thread-safe if the library supports this.

10.4

/bin/sh scripts may assume that kill supports an argument of -signal, that kill and trap support the numeric signals listed in the XSI extension, and that signal 13 (SIGPIPE) can be trapped with trap.

10.8

Use of /etc/logrotate.d/package for logrotate rules is now recommended.

10.9

Control information files should be owned by root:root and either mode 644 or mode 755.

11.4, 11.8.3, 11.8.4

Packages providing alternatives for editor, pager, x-terminal-emulator, or x-window-manager should also provide a slave alternative for the corresponding manual page.

11.5

Cgi-bin executable files may be installed in subdirectories of /usr/lib/cgi-bin and web servers should serve out executables in those subdirectories.

12.5

The GPL version 1 is now included in common-licenses and should be referenced from there instead of included in the copyright file.