Chapter 6. Basics of the Debian package management system

26

  manipulate and manage packages or parts of packages,

  aid the user in the break up of packages that must be transmitted through a limited size

medium such as floppy disks,

  aid developers in the construction of package archives, and

  aid users in the installation of packages which reside on a remote FTP site.

6.2 What is the format of a Debian binary package?

A Debian  package , or a Debian archive file, contains the executable files, libraries, and docu 

mentation associated with a particular suite of program or set of related programs. Normally,

a Debian archive file has a filename that ends in

.deb

.

The internals of this Debian binary packages format are described in the

deb(5)

manual page.

This internal format is subject to change (between major releases of Debian GNU/Linux),

therefore please always use

dpkg deb(8)

for manipulating

.deb

files.

6.3 Why are Debian package file names so long?

The Debian binary package file names conform to the following convention:

_ .deb

Note that

foo

is supposed to be the package name. As a check, one can learn the package

name associated with a particular Debian archive file (.deb file) in one of these ways:

  inspect the  Packages  file in the directory where it was stored at a Debian FTP archive

site. This file contains a stanza describing each package; the first field in each stanza is

the formal package name.

  use the command

dpkg   info foo_VVV RRR.deb

(where VVV and RRR are the ver 

sion and revision of the package in question, respectively). This displays, among other

things, the package name corresponding to the archive file being unpacked.

The

VVV

component is the version number specified by the upstream developer. There are no

standards in place here, so the version number may have formats as different as  19990513 

and  1.3.8pre1 .

The

RRR

component is the Debian revision number, and is specified by the Debian developer

(or an individual user if he chooses to build the package himself). This number corresponds to

the revision level of the Debian package, thus, a new revision level usually signifies changes in

the Debian Makefile (

debian/rules

), the Debian control file (

debian/control

), the instal 

lation or removal scripts (

debian/p*

), or in the configuration files used with the package.