deb-changelog(5)						    dpkg suite							  deb-changelog(5)

NAME

       deb-changelog - dpkg source packages' changelog file format

SYNOPSIS

       changelog

DESCRIPTION

       Changes in the packaged version of a project are explained in the changelog file debian/changelog.  This includes modifications made in the
       source package compared to the upstream one as well as other changes and updates to the package.

       The format of the debian/changelog allows the package building tools to discover which version of the package is being built and  find  out
       other release-specific information.

       That format is a series of entries like this:

       package (version) distributions; metadata
		 [optional blank line(s), stripped]
	 * change-details
	   more-change-details
		 [blank line(s), included in output of dpkg-parsechangelog(1)]
	 * even-more-change-details
		 [optional blank line(s), stripped]
	-- maintainer-name <email-address>  date

       package and version are the source package name and version number.

       distributions  lists  one or more space-separated distributions where this version should be installed when it is uploaded; it is copied to
       the Distribution field in the .changes file.

       metadata is a comma-separated list of keyword=value items.  The only keywords currently supported by  dpkg  are	urgency  and  binary-only.
       urgency's  value  is  used for the Urgency field in the .changes file for the upload.  binary-only with a yes value, is used to denote that
       this changelog entry is for a binary-only non-maintainer upload (an automatic binary rebuild with  the  only  change  being  the  changelog
       entry).

       The  change  details  may  in  fact be any series of lines starting with at least two spaces, but conventionally each change starts with an
       asterisk and a separating space and continuation lines are indented so as to bring them in line with the start of the  text  above.   Blank
       lines may be used here to separate groups of changes, if desired.

       If  this  upload  resolves bugs recorded in the distribution bug tracking system, they may be automatically closed on the inclusion of this
       package into the distribution archive by including the string:
	 Closes: Bug#nnnnn
       in the change details (the exact Perl regular expression is /closes:s*(?:bug)?#?s?d+(?:,s*(?:bug)?#?s?d+)*/i).  This information is
       conveyed via the Closes field in the .changes file.

       The  maintainer	name and email address used in the changelog should be the details of the person who prepared this release of the package.
       They are not necessarily those of the uploader or usual package maintainer.  The information here will be copied to the Changed-By field in
       the .changes file, and then later might be used to send an acknowledgement when the upload has been installed in the distribution archive.

       The date has the following format (compatible and with the same semantics of RFC2822 and RFC5322, or what <<date -R>> generates):

	      day-of-week, dd month yyyy hh:mm:ss +zzzz

       where:

       day-of-week
	      Is one of: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun.

       dd     Is a one- or two-digit day of the month (01-31).

       month  Is one of: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.

       yyyy   Is the four-digit year (e.g. 2010).

       hh     Is the two-digit hour (00-23).

       mm     Is the two-digit minutes (00-59).

       ss     Is the two-digit seconds (00-60).

       [+-]zzzz
	      Is  the time zone offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).  '+' indicates that the time is ahead of (i.e., east of) UTC and '-'
	      indicates that the time is behind (i.e., west of) UTC.  The first two digits indicate the hour difference from UTC and the last  two
	      digits indicate the number of additional minutes difference from UTC.  The last two digits must be in the range 00-59.

       The  first  "title" line with the package name must start at the left hand margin.  The "trailer" line with the maintainer and date details
       must be preceded by exactly one space.  The maintainer details and the date must be separated by exactly two spaces.

       Any line that consists entirely (i.e., no leading whitespace) of # or /* */ style comments, RCS keywords,  Vim  modelines  or  Emacs  local
       variables should be ignored.

       Ancient changelog entries with other formats at the end of the file should be accepted and preserved on output, but their contents might be
       otherwise ignored and parsing stopped at that point.

       The entire changelog must be encoded in UTF-8.

FILES

       debian/changelog

EXAMPLES

       dpkg (1.17.18) unstable; urgency=low

	 [ Guillem Jover ]
	 * Handle empty minimum versions when initializing dependency versions,
	   as the code is mapping the minimum version 0 to '' to avoid outputting
	   useless versions. Regression introduced in dpkg 1.17.17. Closes: #764929

	 [ Updated programs translations ]
	 * Catalan (Guillem Jover).

	 [ Updated dselect translations ]
	 * Catalan (Guillem Jover).
	 * German (Sven Joachim).

	-- Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>  Sun, 12 Oct 2014 15:47:44 +0200

SEE ALSO

       deb-version(7), deb-changes(5), dpkg-parsechangelog(1).

1.19.0.5							    2018-04-16							  deb-changelog(5)