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<title>1. About this manual &#8212; Debian Policy Manual v4.6.0.1</title>
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        <li class="nav-item nav-item-0"><a href="index.html">Debian Policy Manual v4.6.0.1</a> &#187;</li>
        <li class="nav-item nav-item-this"><a href=""><span class="section-number">1. </span>About this manual</a></li> 
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  <section id="about-this-manual">
<h1><span class="section-number">1. </span>About this manual<a class="headerlink" href="#about-this-manual" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<section id="scope">
<span id="s1-1"></span><h2><span class="section-number">1.1. </span>Scope<a class="headerlink" href="#scope" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>This manual describes the policy requirements for the Debian
distribution. This includes the structure and contents of the Debian
archive and several design issues of the operating system, as well as
technical requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in
the distribution.</p>
<p>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 with which the developers
must be conversant.  <a class="footnote-reference brackets" href="#id3" id="id1">1</a></p>
<p>This manual cannot and does not prohibit every possible bug or
undesirable behaviour.  The fact that something is not prohibited by
Debian policy does not mean that it is not a bug, let alone that it is
desirable.  Questions not covered by policy should be evaluated on
their merits.</p>
<p>The footnotes present in this manual are merely informative, and are not
part of Debian policy itself.</p>
<p>The appendices to this manual are not necessarily normative, either.
Please see <a class="reference internal" href="ap-pkg-scope.html"><span class="doc">Introduction and scope of these appendices</span></a> for more information.</p>
<p>In the normative part of this manual, the following terms are used to
describe the importance of each statement:  <a class="footnote-reference brackets" href="#id4" id="id2">2</a></p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p>The terms <em>must</em> and <em>must not</em>, and the adjectives <em>required</em> and
<em>prohibited</em>, denote strong requirements. Packages that do not conform
to these requirements will generally not be considered acceptable for
the Debian distribution. These statements correspond to the <em>critical</em>,
<em>grave</em>, and <em>serious</em> bug severities (normally serious). They are
collectively called <em>Policy requirements</em>.</p></li>
<li><p>The terms <em>should</em> and <em>should not</em>, and the adjective <em>recommended</em>,
denote best practices. Non-conformance with these guidelines will
generally be considered a bug, but will not necessarily render a package
unsuitable for distribution. These statements correspond to bug
severities of <em>important</em>, <em>normal</em>, and <em>minor</em>. They are collectively
called <em>Policy recommendations</em>.</p></li>
<li><p>The adjectives <em>encouraged</em> and <em>discouraged</em> denote places where Policy
offers advice to maintainers, but maintainers are free to follow or not
follow that advice. Non-conformance with this advice is normally not
considered a bug; if a bug seems worthwhile, normally it would have a
severity of <em>wishlist</em>. These statements are collectively called <em>Policy
advice</em>.</p></li>
<li><p>The term <em>may</em> and the adjective <em>optional</em> are used to clarify cases
where it may otherwise appear that Policy is specifying a requirement or
recommendation. In those cases, these words describe decisions that are
truly optional and at the maintainer’s discretion.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The Release Team can, at their discretion, downgrade a Policy requirement
to a Policy recommendation for a given release of the Debian distribution.
This may be done for only a specific package or for the archive as a
whole. This provision is intended to provide flexibility to balance the
quality standards of the distribution against the release schedule and the
importance of making a stable release.</p>
<p>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 intended for local use only.</p>
<p>udebs (stripped-down binary packages used by the Debian Installer) do
not comply with all of the requirements discussed here. See the <a class="reference external" href="https://d-i.debian.org/doc/internals/ch03.html">Debian
Installer internals
manual</a> for
more information about them.</p>
<dl class="footnote brackets">
<dt class="label" id="id3"><span class="brackets"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id1">1</a></span></dt>
<dd><p>Informally, the criteria used for inclusion is that the material meet
one of the following requirements:</p>
<dl class="simple">
<dt>Standard interfaces</dt><dd><p>The material presented represents an interface to the packaging
system that is mandated for use, and is used by, a significant
number of packages, and therefore should not be changed without
peer review. Package maintainers can then rely on this interface
not changing, and the package management software authors need to
ensure compatibility with this interface definition. (Control
file and changelog file formats are examples.)</p>
</dd>
<dt>Chosen Convention</dt><dd><p>If there are a number of technically viable choices that can be
made, but one needs to select one of these options for
inter-operability. The version number format is one example.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
<p>Please note that these are not mutually exclusive; selected
conventions often become parts of standard interfaces.</p>
</dd>
<dt class="label" id="id4"><span class="brackets"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id2">2</a></span></dt>
<dd><p>Compare RFC 2119. Note, however, that these words are used in a
different way in this document.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</section>
<section id="new-versions-of-this-document">
<span id="s1-2"></span><h2><span class="section-number">1.2. </span>New versions of this document<a class="headerlink" href="#new-versions-of-this-document" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>This manual is distributed via the Debian package
<a class="reference external" href="https://packages.debian.org/debian-policy">debian-policy</a>.</p>
<p>The current version of this document is also available from the Debian
web mirrors at <a class="reference external" href="https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/">https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/</a>. Also
available from the same directory are several other formats:
<a class="reference external" href="https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/policy.epub">policy.epub</a>,
<a class="reference external" href="https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/policy.txt">policy.txt</a> and
<a class="reference external" href="https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/policy.pdf">policy.pdf</a>. Included
in both the same directory and in the debian-policy package is a
standalone copy of <a class="reference internal" href="upgrading-checklist.html"><span class="doc">Upgrading checklist</span></a>, which indicates policy
changes between versions of this document.</p>
</section>
<section id="authors-and-maintainers">
<span id="s-authors"></span><h2><span class="section-number">1.3. </span>Authors and Maintainers<a class="headerlink" href="#authors-and-maintainers" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<section id="early-history">
<h3><span class="section-number">1.3.1. </span>Early history<a class="headerlink" href="#early-history" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Originally called “Debian GNU/Linux Policy Manual”, this manual was
initially written in 1996 by Ian Jackson. It was revised on November
27th, 1996 by David A. Morris. Christian Schwarz added new sections on
March 15th, 1997, and reworked/restructured it in April-July 1997.
Christoph Lameter contributed the “Web Standard”. Julian Gilbey
largely restructured it in 2001.  Since September 1998, changes to the
contents of this document have been co-ordinated by means of the
<a class="reference external" href="mailto:debian-policy&#37;&#52;&#48;lists&#46;debian&#46;org">debian-policy mailing list</a></p>
</section>
<section id="current-process">
<h3><span class="section-number">1.3.2. </span>Current process<a class="headerlink" href="#current-process" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>The Policy Editors are DPL delegates with responsibility for the
contents of this document (see the Debian Constitution for the meaning
of “DPL delegate”).  However, the Policy Editors further delegate
their editorial power to a process of establishing project member
consensus on the debian-policy mailing list, as described in
<a class="reference internal" href="ap-process.html"><span class="doc">Debian Policy changes process</span></a>.  The current Policy Editors are:</p>
<ol class="arabic simple">
<li><p>Russ Allbery</p></li>
<li><p>Sean Whitton</p></li>
</ol>
</section>
<section id="improvements">
<h3><span class="section-number">1.3.3. </span>Improvements<a class="headerlink" href="#improvements" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>While the authors of this document have tried hard to avoid typos and
other errors, these do still occur. If you discover an error in this
manual or if you want to give any comments, suggestions, or criticisms
please send an email to the Debian Policy Mailing List,
<a class="reference external" href="mailto:debian-policy&#37;&#52;&#48;lists&#46;debian&#46;org">debian-policy<span>&#64;</span>lists<span>&#46;</span>debian<span>&#46;</span>org</a>, or submit a bug report against the
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">debian-policy</span></code> package.</p>
<p>Please do not try to reach the individual authors or maintainers of the
Policy Manual regarding changes to the Policy.</p>
<p>New techniques and functionality are generally implemented in the
Debian archive (long) before they are detailed in this document.  This
is not considered to be a problem: there is a consensus in the Debian
Project that the task of keeping this document up-to-date should never
block making improvements to Debian.  Nevertheless, it is better to
submit patches to this document sooner rather than later.  This
reduces the amount of work that is needed on the part of others to get
themselves up-to-speed on new best practices.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section id="related-documents">
<span id="s-related"></span><h2><span class="section-number">1.4. </span>Related documents<a class="headerlink" href="#related-documents" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>There are several other documents other than this Policy Manual that are
necessary to fully understand some Debian policies and procedures.</p>
<p>The external “sub-policy” documents are referred to in:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="ch-opersys.html#s-fhs"><span class="std std-ref">File System Structure</span></a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="ch-binary.html#s-virtual-pkg"><span class="std std-ref">Virtual packages</span></a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="ch-opersys.html#s-menus"><span class="std std-ref">Menus</span></a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="ch-customized-programs.html#s-perl"><span class="std std-ref">Perl programs and modules</span></a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="ch-binary.html#s-maintscriptprompt"><span class="std std-ref">Prompting in maintainer scripts</span></a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="ch-customized-programs.html#s-emacs"><span class="std std-ref">Emacs lisp programs</span></a></p></li>
</ul>
<p>In addition to those, which carry the weight of policy, there is the
Debian Developer’s Reference. This document describes procedures and
resources for Debian developers, but it is <em>not</em> normative; rather, it
includes things that don’t belong in the Policy, such as best practices
for developers.</p>
<p>The Developer’s Reference is available in the developers-reference
package. It’s also available from the Debian web mirrors at
<a class="reference external" href="https://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/">https://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, a <a class="reference internal" href="ch-docs.html#s-copyrightformat"><span class="std std-ref">specification for machine-readable copyright files</span></a> is maintained as part of the debian-policy
package using the same procedure as the other policy documents. Use of
this format is optional.</p>
</section>
<section id="definitions">
<span id="s-definitions"></span><h2><span class="section-number">1.5. </span>Definitions<a class="headerlink" href="#definitions" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>The following terms are used in this Policy Manual:</p>
<dl class="simple">
<dt>ASCII</dt><dd><p>The character encoding specified by ANSI X3.4-1986 and its
predecessor standards, referred to in MIME as US-ASCII, and
corresponding to an encoding in eight bits per character of the
first 128 <a class="reference external" href="http://www.unicode.org/">Unicode</a> characters, with the
eighth bit always zero.</p>
</dd>
<dt>UTF-8</dt><dd><p>The transformation format (sometimes called encoding) of
<a class="reference external" href="http://www.unicode.org/">Unicode</a> defined by <a class="reference external" href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3629.txt">RFC
3629</a>. UTF-8 has the
useful property of having ASCII as a subset, so any text encoded in
ASCII is trivially also valid UTF-8.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</section>
<section id="translations">
<h2><span class="section-number">1.6. </span>Translations<a class="headerlink" href="#translations" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>When translations of this document into languages other than English
disagree with the English text, the English text takes precedence.</p>
</section>
</section>

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  <h3><a href="index.html">Table of Contents</a></h3>
  <ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">1. About this manual</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#scope">1.1. Scope</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#new-versions-of-this-document">1.2. New versions of this document</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#authors-and-maintainers">1.3. Authors and Maintainers</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#early-history">1.3.1. Early history</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#current-process">1.3.2. Current process</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#improvements">1.3.3. Improvements</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#related-documents">1.4. Related documents</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#definitions">1.5. Definitions</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#translations">1.6. Translations</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

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