Provided by: dpkg-dev_1.22.18ubuntu2_all 
NAME
deb-control - Debian binary package control file format
SYNOPSIS
DEBIAN/control
DESCRIPTION
Each Debian binary package contains a control file in its control member, and its deb822(5) format is a
subset of the debian/control template source control file in Debian source packages, see
deb-src-control(5).
This file contains a number of fields. Each field begins with a tag, such as Package or Version (case
insensitive), followed by a colon, and the body of the field (case sensitive unless stated otherwise).
Fields are delimited only by field tags. In other words, field text may be multiple lines in length, but
the installation tools will generally join lines when processing the body of the field (except in the
case of the Description field, see below).
FIELDS
Package: package-name (required)
The value of this field determines the package name, and is used to generate file names by most
installation tools.
Package-Type: deb|udeb|type
This field defines the type of the package. udeb is for size-constrained packages used by the debian
installer. deb is the default value, it is assumed if the field is absent. More types might be
added in the future.
Version: version-string (required)
Typically, this is the original package's version number in whatever form the program's author uses.
It may also include a Debian revision number (for non-native packages). The exact format and sorting
algorithm are described in deb-version(7).
Maintainer: fullname-email (recommended)
Should be in the format “Joe Bloggs <jbloggs@foo.com>”, and is typically the person who created the
package, as opposed to the author of the software that was packaged.
Description: short-description (recommended)
long-description
The format for the package description is a short brief summary on the first line (after the
Description field). The following lines should be used as a longer, more detailed description. Each
line of the long description must be preceded by a space, and blank lines in the long description
must contain a single ‘.’ following the preceding space.
Section: section
This is a general field that gives the package a category based on the software that it installs.
Some common sections are utils, net, mail, text, x11, etc.
The accepted values are based on the specific distribution policy.
Priority: priority
Sets the importance of this package in relation to the system as a whole. The known priorities are
required, important, standard, optional, extra, and unknown, but other values can be used as well.
How to apply these values depends on the specific distribution policy.
Installed-Size: size
The approximate total size of the package's installed files, in KiB units. The algorithm to compute
the size is described in deb-substvars(5).
Protected: yes|no
This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes. It denotes a package that is required
mostly for proper booting of the system or used for custom system-local meta-packages. dpkg(1) or
any other installation tool will not allow a Protected package to be removed (at least not without
using one of the force options).
Supported since dpkg 1.20.1.
Essential: yes|no
This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes. It denotes a package that is required for
the packaging system, for proper operation of the system in general or during boot (although the
latter should be converted to Protected field instead). dpkg(1) or any other installation tool will
not allow an Essential package to be removed (at least not without using one of the force options).
Build-Essential: yes|no
This field is usually only needed when the answer is yes, and is commonly injected by the archive
software. It denotes a package that is required when building other packages.
Architecture: arch|all (required)
The architecture specifies which type of hardware this package was compiled for. Common
architectures are amd64, armel, i386, powerpc, etc. Note that the all value is meant for packages
that are architecture independent. Some examples of this are shell and Perl scripts, and
documentation.
Origin: name
The name of the distribution this package is originating from.
Bugs: url
The url of the bug tracking system for this package. The current used format is bts-type://bts-
address, like debbugs://bugs.debian.org.
Homepage: url
The upstream project home page url.
Tag: tag-list
List of tags describing the qualities of the package. The description and list of supported tags can
be found in the debtags package.
Multi-Arch: no|same|foreign|allowed
This field is used to indicate how this package should behave on a multi-arch installations.
no This value is the default when the field is omitted, in which case adding the field with an
explicit no value is generally not needed.
same
This package is co-installable with itself, but it must not be used to satisfy the dependency of
any package of a different architecture from itself.
foreign
This package is not co-installable with itself, but should be allowed to satisfy a non-arch-
qualified dependency of a package of a different arch from itself (if a dependency has an
explicit arch-qualifier then the value foreign is ignored).
allowed
This allows reverse-dependencies to indicate in their Depends field that they accept this package
from a foreign architecture by qualifying the package name with :any, but has no effect
otherwise.
Source: source-name [(source-version)]
The name of the source package that this binary package came from, if it is different than the name
of the package itself. If the source version differs from the binary version, then the source-name
will be followed by a source-version in parenthesis. This can happen for example on a binary-only
non-maintainer upload, or when setting a different binary version via «dpkg-gencontrol -v».
Subarchitecture: value
Kernel-Version: value
Installer-Menu-Item: value
These fields are used by the debian-installer and are usually not needed. For more details about
them, see
<https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/-/raw/master/doc/devel/modules.txt>.
Depends: package-list
List of packages that are required for this package to provide a non-trivial amount of functionality.
The package maintenance software will not allow a package to be installed if the packages listed in
its Depends field aren't installed (at least not without using the force options). In an
installation, the postinst scripts of packages listed in Depends fields are run before those of the
packages which depend on them. On the opposite, in a removal, the prerm script of a package is run
before those of the packages listed in its Depends field.
Pre-Depends: package-list
List of packages that must be installed and configured before this one can be installed. This is
usually used in the case where this package requires another package for running its preinst script.
Recommends: package-list
Lists packages that would be found together with this one in all but unusual installations. The
package maintenance software will warn the user if they install a package without those listed in its
Recommends field.
Suggests: package-list
Lists packages that are related to this one and can perhaps enhance its usefulness, but without which
installing this package is perfectly reasonable.
The syntax of Depends, Pre-Depends, Recommends and Suggests fields is a list of groups of alternative
packages. Each group is a list of packages separated by vertical bar (or “pipe”) symbols, ‘|’. The
groups are separated by commas. Commas are to be read as “AND”, and pipes as “OR”, with pipes binding
more tightly. Each package name is optionally followed by an architecture qualifier appended after a
colon ‘:’, optionally followed by a version number specification in parentheses.
An architecture qualifier name can be a real Debian architecture name (since dpkg 1.16.5) or any (since
dpkg 1.16.2). If omitted, the default is the current binary package architecture. A real Debian
architecture name will match exactly that architecture for that package name, any will match any
architecture for that package name if the package has been marked as Multi-Arch: allowed.
A version number may start with a ‘>>’, in which case any later version will match, and may specify or
omit the Debian packaging revision (separated by a hyphen). Accepted version relationships are ‘>>’ for
greater than, ‘<<’ for less than, ‘>=’ for greater than or equal to, ‘<=’ for less than or equal to, and
‘=’ for equal to.
Breaks: package-list
Lists packages that this one breaks, for example by exposing bugs when the named packages rely on
this one. The package maintenance software will not allow broken packages to be configured;
generally the resolution is to upgrade the packages named in a Breaks field.
Conflicts: package-list
Lists packages that conflict with this one, for example by containing files with the same names. The
package maintenance software will not allow conflicting packages to be installed at the same time.
Two conflicting packages should each include a Conflicts line mentioning the other.
Replaces: package-list
List of packages files from which this one replaces. This is used for allowing this package to
overwrite the files of another package and is usually used with the Conflicts field to force removal
of the other package, if this one also has the same files as the conflicted package.
The syntax of Breaks, Conflicts and Replaces is a list of package names, separated by commas (and
optional whitespace). In the Breaks and Conflicts fields, the comma should be read as “OR”. An optional
architecture qualifier can also be appended to the package name with the same syntax as above, but the
default is any instead of the binary package architecture. An optional version can also be given with
the same syntax as above for the Breaks, Conflicts and Replaces fields.
Enhances: package-list
This is a list of packages that this one enhances. It is similar to Suggests but in the opposite
direction.
Provides: package-list
This is a list of virtual packages that this one provides. Usually this is used in the case of
several packages all providing the same service. For example, sendmail and exim can serve as a mail
server, so they provide a common package (“mail-transport-agent”) on which other packages can depend.
This will allow sendmail or exim to serve as a valid option to satisfy the dependency. This prevents
the packages that depend on a mail server from having to know the package names for all of them, and
using ‘|’ to separate the list.
The syntax of Provides is a list of package names, separated by commas (and optional whitespace). An
optional architecture qualifier can also be appended to the package name with the same syntax as above.
If omitted, the default is the current binary package architecture. An optional exact (equal to) version
can also be given with the same syntax as above (honored since dpkg 1.17.11).
Built-Using: package-list
This dependency field lists extra source packages that were used during the build of this binary
package, for license compliance purposes. This is an indication to the archive maintenance software
that these extra source packages must be kept whilst this binary package is maintained. This field
must be a comma-separated list of source package names with strict ‘=’ version relationships enclosed
within parenthesis. Note that the archive maintenance software is likely to refuse to accept an
upload which declares a Built-Using relationship which cannot be satisfied within the archive.
Static-Built-Using: package-list
This dependency field lists extra source packages that were used during the build of this binary
package, for static building purposes (for example linking against static libraries, builds for
source-centered languages such as Go or Rust, usage of header-only C/C++ libraries, injecting data
blobs into code, etc.). This is useful to track whether this package might need to be rebuilt when
source packages listed here have been updated, for example due to security updates. This field must
be a comma-separated list of source package names with strict ‘=’ version relationships enclosed
within parenthesis.
Supported since dpkg 1.21.3.
Built-For-Profiles: profile-list (obsolete)
This field used to specify a whitespace separated list of build profiles that this binary packages
was built with (since dpkg 1.17.2 until 1.18.18). The information previously found in this field can
now be found in the .buildinfo file, which supersedes it.
Auto-Built-Package: reason-list
This field specifies a whitespace separated list of reasons why this package was auto-generated.
Binary packages marked with this field will not appear in the debian/control template source control
file. The only currently used reason is debug-symbols.
Build-Ids: elf-build-id-list
This field specifies a whitespace separated list of ELF build-ids. These are unique identifiers for
semantically identical ELF objects, for each of these within the package.
The format or the way to compute each build-id is not defined by design.
EXAMPLE
Package: grep
Essential: yes
Priority: required
Section: base
Maintainer: Wichert Akkerman <wakkerma@debian.org>
Architecture: sparc
Version: 2.4-1
Pre-Depends: libc6 (>= 2.0.105)
Provides: rgrep
Conflicts: rgrep
Description: GNU grep, egrep and fgrep.
The GNU family of grep utilities may be the "fastest grep in the west".
GNU grep is based on a fast lazy-state deterministic matcher (about
twice as fast as stock Unix egrep) hybridized with a Boyer-Moore-Gosper
search for a fixed string that eliminates impossible text from being
considered by the full regexp matcher without necessarily having to
look at every character. The result is typically many times faster
than Unix grep or egrep. (Regular expressions containing backreferencing
will run more slowly, however).
BUGS
The Build-Ids field uses a rather generic name out of its original context within an ELF object, which
serves a very specific purpose and executable format.
SEE ALSO
deb822(5), deb-src-control(5), deb(5), deb-version(7), debtags(1), dpkg(1), dpkg-deb(1).
1.22.18 2025-03-20 deb-control(5)