This manual describes the policy requirements for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. This includes the structure and contents of the Debian archive, several design issues of the operating system, as well as technical requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in the distribution.
This manual also describes Debian policy as it relates to creating Debian packages. It is not a tutorial on how to build packages, nor is it exhaustive where it comes to describing the behavior of the packaging system. Instead, this manual attempts to define the interface to the package management system that the developers have to be conversant with. [1]
Please note that the footnotes present in this manual are merely informative, and are not part of Debian policy itself.
In this manual, the words must, should and may, and the adjectives required, recommended and optional, are used to distinguish the significance of the various guidelines in this policy document. Packages that do not conform the the guidelines denoted by must (or required) will generally not be considered acceptable for the Debian distribution. Non-conformance with guidelines denoted by should (or recommended) will generally be considered a bug, but will not necessarily render a package unsuitable for distribution. Guidelines denoted by may (or optional) are truly optional and adherence is left to the maintainer's discretion.
These classifications are roughly equivalent to the bug severities important (for must or required directive violations), normal (for should or recommended directive violations) and wishlist (for optional items). [2]
Much of the information presented in this manual will be useful even when building a package which is to be distributed in some other way or is for local use.
The current version of this document is always accessible from the Debian FTP
server ftp.debian.org
at /debian/doc/package-developer/debian-policy.html.tar.gz
or from the Debian WWW server at The Debian Policy
Manual
.
In addition, this manual is distributed via the Debian package debian-policy.
As the Debian GNU/Linux system is continuously evolving this manual is changed from time to time.
While the authors of this document tried hard not to include any typos or other
errors these still occur. If you discover an error in this manual or if you
want to tell us any comments, suggestions, or critics please send an email to
the Debian Policy List, debian-policy@lists.debian.org
,
or submit a bug report against the debian-policy package.
ijackson@gnu.ai.mit.edu
schwarz@debian.org
bweaver@debian.org
debian-policy@lists.debian.org