10.28. Version 3.8.1

Released March, 2009.

3.8

Care should be taken when adding functionality to essential and such additions create an obligation to support that functionality in essential forever unless significant work is done.

4.4

Changelog files must be encoded in UTF-8.

4.4

Some format requirements for changelog files are now “must” instead of “should.”

4.4.1

Alternative changelog formats have been removed. Debian only supports one changelog format for the Debian Archive.

4.9.1

New nocheck option for DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS indicating any build-time test suite provided by the package should not be run.

5.1

All control files must be encoded in UTF-8.

5.2

debian/control allows comment lines starting with # with no preceding whitespace.

9.3

Init scripts ending in .sh are not handled specially. They are not sourced and are not guaranteed to be run by /bin/sh regardless of the #! line. This brings Policy in line with the long-standing behavior of the init system in Debian.

9.3.2

The start action of an init script must exit successfully and not start the daemon again if it’s already running.

9.3.2

/var/run and /var/lock may be mounted as temporary filesystems, and init scripts must therefore create any necessary subdirectories dynamically.

10.4

/bin/sh scripts may assume that local can take multiple variable arguments and supports assignment.

11.6

User mailboxes may be mode 600 and owned by the user rather than mode 660, owned by user, and group mail.