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diff --git a/man/deb.5 b/man/deb.5 new file mode 100644 index 0000000..865d9b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/man/deb.5 @@ -0,0 +1,102 @@ +.\" dpkg manual page - deb(5) +.\" +.\" Copyright © 1995 Raul Miller +.\" Copyright © 1996 Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk> +.\" Copyright © 2000 Wichert Akkerman <wakkerma@debian.org> +.\" Copyright © 2006-2011 Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> +.\" +.\" This is free software; you can 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 of the License, 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. +.\" +.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License +.\" along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. +. +.TH deb 5 "2011-08-14" "Debian Project" "Debian" +.SH NAME +deb \- Debian binary package format +.SH SYNOPSIS +.IB filename .deb +.SH DESCRIPTION +The +.B .deb +format is the Debian binary package file format. It is understood by +dpkg 0.93.76 and later, and is generated by default by all versions +of dpkg since 1.2.0 and all i386/ELF versions since 1.1.1elf. +.PP +The format described here is used since Debian 0.93; details of the +old format are described in +.BR deb\-old (5). +.SH FORMAT +The file is an +.B ar +archive with a magic value of +.BR !<arch> . +The file names might contain a trailing slash. +.PP +The \fBtar\fP archives currently allowed are, the old-style (v7) format, +the pre-POSIX ustar format, a subset of the GNU format (only the new +style long pathnames and long linknames, supported since dpkg 1.4.1.17), +and the POSIX ustar format (long names supported since dpkg 1.15.0). +Unrecognized tar typeflags are considered an error. +.PP +The first member is named +.B debian\-binary +and contains a series of lines, separated by newlines. Currently only +one line is present, the format version number, +.BR 2.0 +at the time this manual page was written. +Programs which read new-format archives should be prepared for the +minor number to be increased and new lines to be present, and should +ignore these if this is the case. +.PP +If the major number has changed, an incompatible change has been made +and the program should stop. If it has not, then the program should +be able to safely continue, unless it encounters an unexpected member +in the archive (except at the end), as described below. +.PP +The second required member is named +.BR control.tar.gz . +It is a gzipped tar archive containing the package control information, +as a series of plain files, of which the file +.B control +is mandatory and contains the core control information. The control +tarball may optionally contain an entry for +.RB ` . ', +the current directory. +.PP +The third, last required member is named +.BR data.tar . +It contains the filesystem as a tar archive, either +not compressed (supported since dpkg 1.10.24), or compressed with +gzip (with \fB.gz\fP extension), +xz (with \fB.xz\fP extension, supported since dpkg 1.15.6), +bzip2 (with \fB.bz2\fP extension, supported since dpkg 1.10.24) or +lzma (with \fB.lzma\fP extension, supported since dpkg 1.13.25). +.PP +These members must occur in this exact order. Current implementations +should ignore any additional members after +.BR data.tar . +Further members may be defined in the future, and (if possible) will be +placed after these three. Any additional members that may need to be +inserted before +.B data.tar +and which should be safely ignored by older programs, will have names +starting with an underscore, +.RB ` _ '. +.PP +Those new members which won't be able to be safely ignored will be +inserted before +.B data.tar +with names starting with something other than underscores, or will +(more likely) cause the major version number to be increased. +.SH SEE ALSO +.BR deb\-old (5), +.BR dpkg\-deb (1), +.BR deb\-control (5). |