10.29. Version 3.8.0

Released June, 2008.

2.4, 3.7

The base section has been removed. contrib and non-free have been removed from the section list; they are only categories. The base system is now defined by priority.

4.9

If dpkg-source -x doesn’t provide the source that will be compiled, a debian/rules patch target is recommended and should do whatever else is necessary.

4.9.1, 10.1

Standardized the format of DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS. Specified permitted characters for tags, required that tags be whitespace-separated, allowed packages to assume non-conflicting tags, and required unknown flags be ignored.

4.9.1

Added parallel=n to the standardized DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS tags, indicating that a package should be built using up to n parallel processes if the package supports it

4.13

Debian packages should not use convenience copies of code from other packages unless the included package is explicitly intended to be used that way.

4.14

If dpkg-source -x doesn’t produce source ready for editing and building with dpkg-buildpackage, packages should include a debian/README.source file explaining how to generate the patched source, add a new modification, and remove an existing modification. This file may also be used to document packaging a new upstream release and any other complexity of the Debian build process.

5.6.3

The Uploaders field in debian/control may be wrapped.

5.6.12

An empty Debian revision is equivalent to a Debian revision of 0 in a version number.

5.6.23

New Homepage field for upstream web sites.

6.5, 6.6, 7

The Breaks field declares that this package breaks another and prevents installation of the breaking package unless the package named in Breaks is deconfigured first. This field should not be used until the dpkg in Debian stable supports it.

8.1, 8.2

Clarify which files should go into a shared library package, into a separate package, or into the -dev package. Suggest -tools instead of -runtime for runtime support programs, since that naming is more common in Debian.

9.5

Files in /etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly} must be configuration files (upgraded from should). Mention the hourly directory.

11.8.6

Packages providing /etc/X11/Xresources files need not conflict with xbase (<< 3.3.2.3a-2), which is long-obsolete.

12.1

Manual pages in locale-specific directories should use either the legacy encoding for that directory or UTF-8. Country names should not be included in locale-specific manual page directories unless indicating a significant difference in the language. All characters in the manual page source should be representable in the legacy encoding for a locale even if the man page is encoded in UTF-8.

12.5

The Apache 2.0 license is now in common-licenses and should be referenced rather than quoted in debian/copyright.

12.5

Packages in contrib and non-free should state in the copyright file that the package is not part of Debian GNU/Linux and briefly explain why.

debconf

Underscore (_) is allowed in debconf template names.