debian man page for deb-symbols

deb-symbols(5)							  dpkg utilities						    deb-symbols(5)

NAME
       deb-symbols - Debian's extended shared library information file

SYNOPSIS
       symbols

DESCRIPTION
       The format for an extended shared library dependency information entry in these files is:

       library-soname main-dependency-template
       [| alternative-dependency-template]
       [...]
       [* field-name: field-value]
       [...]
	symbol minimal-version [id-of-dependency-template]

       The library-soname is exactly the value of the SONAME field as exported by objdump(1). A dependency-template is a dependency where #MINVER#
       is dynamically replaced either by a version check like "(>= minimal-version)" or by nothing (if an unversioned dependency is deemed  suffi-
       cient).

       Each exported symbol (listed as name@version, with version being "Base" if the library is not versioned) is associated to a minimal-version
       of its dependency template (the main dependency template is used if id-of-dependency-template is not present). The first alternative depen-
       dency template is numbered 1, the second one 2, etc.

       Each  entry  for a library can also have some fields of meta-information.  Those fields are stored on lines starting with an asterisk. Cur-
       rently, the only valid field is Build-Depends-Package, it indicates the name of the "-dev" package associated to the library and is used by
       dpkg-shlibdeps to make sure that the dependency generated is at least as strict as the corresponding build dependency.

EXAMPLES
   Simple symbols file
       libftp.so.3 libftp3 #MINVER#
	DefaultNetbuf@Base 3.1-1-6
	FtpAccess@Base 3.1-1-6
	[...]

   Advanced symbols file
       libGL.so.1 libgl1
       | libgl1-mesa-glx #MINVER#
       * Build-Depends-Package: libgl1-mesa-dev
	publicGlSymbol@Base 6.3-1
	[...]
	implementationSpecificSymbol@Base 6.5.2-7 1
	[...]

SEE ALSO
       http://wiki.debian.org/Projects/ImprovedDpkgShlibdeps
       dpkg-shlibdeps(1), dpkg-gensymbols(1).

Debian Project							    2011-08-14							    deb-symbols(5)