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Annotated edit history of deb(5) version 4, including all changes. View license author blame.
Rev Author # Line
1 perry 1 DEB
2 !!!DEB
3 NAME
4 SYNOPSIS
5 DESCRIPTION
6 FORMAT
7 SEE ALSO
8 ----
9 !!NAME
10
11
12 deb - Debian binary package format
13 !!SYNOPSIS
14
15
16 ''filename''__.deb__
17 !!DESCRIPTION
18
19
20 The __.deb__ format is the Debian binary package file
21 format. It is understood by dpkg 0.93.76 and later, and is
22 generated by default by all versions of dpkg since 1.2.0 and
23 all i386/ELF versions since 1.1.1elf.
24
25
26 The format described here is used since Debian 0.93; details
27 of the old format are described in
4 perry 28 deb-old(5).
1 perry 29 !!FORMAT
30
31
32 The file is an __ar__ archive with a magic number of
33 __!__.
34
35
36 The first member is named __debian-binary__ and contains
37 a series of lines, separated by newlines. Currently only one
38 line is present, the format version number, __2.0__ at
39 the time this manual page was written. Programs which read
40 new-format archives should be prepared for the minor number
41 to be increased and new lines to be present, and should
42 ignore these if this is the case.
43
44
45 If the major number has changed, an incompatible change has
46 been made and the program should stop. If it has not, then
47 the program should be able to safely continue, unless it
48 encounters an unexpected member in the archive (except at
49 the end), as described below.
50
51
52 The second required member is named __control.tar.gz .__
53 It is a gzipped tar archive containing the package control
54 information, as a series of plain files, of which the file
55 __control__ is mandatory and contains the core control
56 information. Please see the ''Debian Packaging Manual,
57 section 2.2'' for details of these files. The control
58 tarball may optionally contain an entry for `__.__', the
59 current directory.
60
61
62 The third, last required member is named __data.tar.gz
63 .__ It contains the filesystem archive as a gzipped tar
64 archive.
65
66
67 These members must occur in this exact order. Current
68 implementations should ignore any additional members after
69 __data.tar.gz__. Further members may be defined in the
70 future, and (if possible) will be placed after these three.
71 Any additional members that may need to be inserted before
72 __data.tar.gz__ and which should be safely ignored by
73 older programs, will have names starting with an underscore,
74 `_____'.
75
76
77 Those new members which won't be able to be safely ignored
78 will be inserted before __data.tar.gz__ with names
79 starting with something other than underscores, or will
80 (more likely) cause the major version number to be
81 increased.
82 !!SEE ALSO
83
84
4 perry 85 deb-old(5), __dpkg-deb__(1),
86 deb-control(5), ''Debian Packaging
1 perry 87 Manual''.
88 ----
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