Debian Developer's Reference
Developer's Reference Team <developers-reference@packages.debian.org>
Copyright © 2019 - 2023 Holger Levsen
Copyright © 2015 - 2020 Hideki Yamane
Copyright © 2008 - 2015 Lucas Nussbaum
Copyright © 2004 - 2007 Andreas Barth
Copyright © 2002 - 2009 Raphaël Hertzog
Copyright © 1998 - 2003 Adam Di Carlo
Copyright © 1997 - 1998 Christian Schwarz
This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2 in the Debian distribution or on the World Wide Web at the GNU web site. You can also obtain it by writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
This is Debian Developer's Reference version 13.8
,
released on 2024-08-05
.
If you want to print this reference, you should use the pdf version. This manual is also available in some other languages.
- 1. Scope of This Document
- 2. Applying to Become a Member
- 3. Debian Developer's Duties
- 4. Resources for Debian Members
- 4.1. Mailing lists
- 4.2. IRC channels
- 4.3. Documentation
- 4.4. Debian machines
- 4.4.1. The bugs server
- 4.4.2. The ftp-master server
- 4.4.3. The www-master server
- 4.4.4. The people web server
- 4.4.5. salsa.debian.org: Git repositories and collaborative development platform
- 4.4.6. GitHub.com: Submitting pull requests to upstream repositories
- 4.4.7. chroots to different distributions
- 4.5. The Developers Database
- 4.6. The Debian archive
- 4.7. Debian mirrors
- 4.8. The Incoming system
- 4.9. Package information
- 4.10. The Debian Package Tracker
- 4.11. Developer's packages overview
- 4.12. Debian's FusionForge installation: Alioth
- 4.13. Goodies for Debian Members
- 5. Managing Packages
- 5.1. New packages
- 5.2. Recording changes in the package
- 5.3. Testing the package
- 5.4. Layout of the source package
- 5.5. Picking a distribution
- 5.6. Uploading a package
- 5.7. Specifying the package section, subsection and priority
- 5.8. Handling bugs
- 5.9. Moving, removing, renaming, orphaning, adopting, and reintroducing packages
- 5.10. Porting and being ported
- 5.11. Non-Maintainer Uploads (NMUs)
- 5.12. Package Salvaging
- 5.13. Collaborative maintenance
- 5.14. The testing distribution
- 5.15. The Stable backports archive
- 5.15.1. Basics
- 5.15.2. Exception to the testing-first rule
- 5.15.3. Who can maintain packages in the stable-backports archive?
- 5.15.4. When can one start uploading to stable-backports?
- 5.15.5. How long must a package be maintained when uploaded to stable-backports?
- 5.15.6. How often shall one upload to stable-backports?
- 5.15.7. How can one learn more about backporting?
- 6. Best Packaging Practices
- 6.1. Best practices for
debian/rules
- 6.2. Best practices for
debian/control
- 6.3. Best practices for
debian/changelog
- 6.4. Best practices around security
- 6.5. Best practices for maintainer scripts
- 6.6. Configuration management with
debconf
- 6.7. Internationalization
- 6.8. Common packaging situations
- 6.8.1. Packages using
autoconf
/automake
- 6.8.2. Libraries
- 6.8.3. Documentation
- 6.8.4. Specific types of packages
- 6.8.5. Architecture-independent data
- 6.8.6. Needing a certain locale during build
- 6.8.7. Make transition packages deborphan compliant
- 6.8.8. Best practices for
.orig.tar.{gz,bz2,xz}
files - 6.8.9. Best practices for debug packages
- 6.8.10. Best practices for meta-packages
- 6.8.1. Packages using
- 6.1. Best practices for
- 7. Beyond Packaging
- 8. Internationalization and Translations