Uploading to stable means that the package will be placed into the
-
Extra care should be taken when uploading to stable. Basically, a @@ -1503,13 +1554,29 @@ packages (by messing with Provides or shlibs files), possibly making those other packages uninstallable, is strongly discouraged.
The Release Team (which can be reached at &email-debian-release;) will
-regularly evaluate the uploads in proposed-updates and decide if
+regularly evaluate the uploads in stable-proposed-updates and decide if
your package can be included in stable. Please be clear (and
verbose, if necessary) in your changelog entries for uploads to
stable, because otherwise the package won't be considered for
inclusion.
-
+
+The testing distribution is fed with packages from unstable according to the rules
+explained in . However, the release manager may stop the testing
+scripts when he wants to freeze the distribution. In that case, you may want to
+upload to testing-proposed-updates to provide fixed packages during the freeze.
+
+Keep in mind that packages uploaded there are not automatically processed, they
+have to go through the hands of the release manager. So you'd better have a good
+reason to upload there. In order to know what a good reason is in the
+release manager's eyes, you should read the instructions that he regularly
+gives on &email-debian-devel-announce;.
+
+You should not upload to testing-proposed-updates when you can update your
+packages through unstable. If you can't (for example because you have a
+newer development version in unstable), you may use it but it is recommended to ask
+the authorization of the release manager before.
As discussed above, export controlled software should not be uploaded
to ftp-master. Instead, upload the package to
@@ -1797,29 +1864,25 @@ distribution, i.e., stable, unstable, or experimental. Porters have
slightly different rules than non-porters, due to their unique
circumstances (see ).
-When a security bug is detected, a fixed package should be uploaded
-as soon as possible. In this case, the Debian security officers get in
-contact with the package maintainer to make sure a fixed package is
-uploaded within a reasonable time (less than 48 hours). If the package
-maintainer cannot provide a fixed package fast enough or if he/she
-cannot be reached in time, a security officer may upload a fixed
-package (i.e., do a source NMU).
+When a security bug is detected, the security team may do an NMU.
+Please refer to for more information.
During the release cycle (see ), NMUs which fix
serious or higher severity bugs are encouraged and accepted. Even
during this window, however, you should endeavor to reach the current
maintainer of the package; they might be just about to upload a fix
for the problem. As with any source NMU, the guidelines found in need to be followed.
+id="nmu-guidelines"> need to be followed. Special exceptions are made
+for .
-Bug fixes to unstable by non-maintainers are also acceptable, but only
-as a last resort or with permission. The following protocol should
-be respected to do an NMU:
+Uploading bug fixes to unstable by non-maintainers should only be done
+by following this protocol:
+At times, the release manager or an organized group of developers can
+announce a certain period of time in which the NMU rules are relaxed.
+This usually involves shortening the period during which one is to wait
+before uploading the fixes, and shortening the DELAYED period. It is
+important to notice that even in these so-called "bug squashing party"
+times, the NMU'er has to file bugs and contact the developer first,
+and act later.
@@ -1888,11 +1959,7 @@ absolutely necessary for someone other than the usual maintainer to
make a release based on a new upstream version then the person making
the release should start with the debian-revision value
`0.1'. The usual maintainer of a package should start their
-debian-revision numbering at `1'. Note that if you do
-this, you'll have to invoke
-If one of your packages has been NMUed, you have to incorporate the
+If one of your packages has been NMU'ed, you have to incorporate the
changes in your copy of the sources. This is easy, you just have
to apply the patch that has been sent to you. Once this is done, you
have to close the bugs that have been tagged fixed by the NMU. You
@@ -1975,10 +2042,10 @@ BTS or by adding the required closes: #nnnn in the changelog
entry of your next upload.
In any case, you should not be upset by the NMU. An NMU is not a
-personal attack against the maintainer. It is just the proof that
-someone cares enough about the package and was willing to help
-you in your work. You should be thankful to him and you may want to
-ask him if he would be interested to help you on a more frequent
+personal attack against the maintainer. It is a proof that
+someone cares enough about the package and that they were willing to help
+you in your work, so you should be thankful. You may also want to
+ask them if they would be interested to help you on a more frequent
basis as co-maintainer or backup maintainer
(see ).
@@ -2233,7 +2300,7 @@ enhanced to support cross-compiling.
"Collaborative maintenance" is a term describing the sharing of Debian
package maintenance duties by several people. This collaboration is
-almost a good idea, since it generally results in higher quality and
+almost always a good idea, since it generally results in higher quality and
faster bug fix turnaround time. It is strongly recommended that
packages in which a priority of Standard or which are part of
the base set have co-maintainers.
Add the co-maintainer's correct maintainer name and address to the
Uploaders field in the global part of the
-
@@ -2351,10 +2422,21 @@ it. In this case, you need to follow a two-step process. First, set
your
+At other times, you may make a mistake in constructing your package and
+wish to replace it. The only way to do this is to increase the version
+number and upload a new version. The old version will be expired in
+the usual manner. Note that this applies to each part of your package,
+including the sources: if you wish to replace the upstream source tarball
+of your package, you will need to upload it with a different version. An
+easy possibility is to replace
@@ -2403,8 +2485,8 @@ automatically once you upload a new version with an updated
Maintainer: field, although it can take a few hours after the
upload is done. If you do not expect to upload a new version for a while,
you can use to get the bug reports. However,
-make sure that the old maintainer is not embarrassed by the fact that
-he will continue to receive the bugs during that time.
+make sure that the old maintainer has no problem with the fact that
+they will continue to receive the bugs during that time.
+Once you've dealt with a bug report (e.g. fixed it), mark it as
+done (close it) by sending an explanation message to
+
You should never close bugs via the bug server close
command sent to &email-bts-control;. If you do so, the original
submitter will not receive any information about why the bug was
@@ -2459,15 +2547,17 @@ closed.
As a package maintainer, you will often find bugs in other packages or
have bugs reported against your packages which are actually bugs in
-other packages. The
Filing bugs for problems that you find in other packages is one of
the "civic obligations" of maintainership, see
-for details. However handling the bugs on your own packages is
+for details. However, handling the bugs in your own packages is
even more important.
Here's a list of steps that you may follow to handle a bug report:
@@ -2484,15 +2574,14 @@ give an informative error message. This is an issue that may need
to be brought to the upstream author.
If the bug submitter disagree with your decision to close the bug,
-he may reopen it until you find an agreement on how to handle it.
+they may reopen it until you find an agreement on how to handle it.
If you don't find any, you may want to tag the bug wontfix
to let people know that the bug exists but that it won't be corrected.
If this situation is unacceptable, you (or the submitter) may want to
require a decision of the technical committee by reassigning the bug
to
+Due to their sensitive nature, security-related bugs must be handled
+carefully. The Debian Security Team exists to coordinate this
+activity, keeping track of outstanding security problems, helping
+maintainers with security problems or fix them themselves, sending
+security advisories, and maintaining security.debian.org.
+
+
+
+
+
+When you become aware of a security-related bug in a Debian package,
+whether or not you are the maintainer, collect pertinent information
+about the problem, and promptly contact the security team at
+&email-security-team;.
+Useful information includes, for example:
+
+
+Unlike most other activities within Debian, information about security
+issues must sometimes be kept private for a time. Whether this is the
+case depends on the nature of the problem and corresponding fix, and
+whether it is already a matter of public knowledge.
+
+There are a few ways a developer can learn of a security problem:
+
+
+ In all cases if the person who reports the problem asks to not
+ disclose the information that should be respected, with the obvious
+ exception of informing the security team (make sure you tell the
+ security team that the information can not be disclosed).
+
+
+Please note that if secrecy is needed you can also not upload a fix to
+unstable (or anywhere else), since the changelog and diff information
+for unstable is public.
+
+
+There are two reasons for releasing information even though secrecy is
+requested: the problem has been known for a while, or that the problem
+or exploit has become public.
+
+
+Security advisories are only issued for the current, released stable
+distribution, not for testing or unstable. When released, advisories
+are sent to the &email-debian-security-announce;
+mailing list and posted on
+One way that you can assist the security team in their duties is to
+provide fixed packages suitable for a security advisory for the stable
+Debian release.
+
+ When an update is made to the stable release, care must be taken to
+ avoid changing system behavior or introducing new bugs. In order to
+ do this, make as few changes as possible to fix the bug. Users and
+ administrators rely on the exact behavior of a release once it is
+ made, so any change that is made might break someone's system.
+ This is especially true of libraries: make sure you never change the
+ API or ABI, no matter how small the change.
+
+This means that moving to a new upstream version is not a good
+solution. Instead, the relevant changes should be back-ported to the
+version present in the current stable Debian release. Generally,
+upstream maintainers are willing to help if needed. If not, the
+Debian security team may be able to help.
+
+In some cases, it is not possible to back-port a security fix, for
+example when large amounts of source code need to be modified or
+rewritten. If this happens, it may be necessary to move to a new
+upstream version. However, you must always coordinate that with the
+security team beforehand.
+
+Related to this is another important guideline: always test your
+changes. If you have an exploit available, try it and see if it
+indeed succeeds on the unpatched package and fails on the fixed
+package. Test other, normal actions as well, as sometimes a security
+fix can break seemingly unrelated features in subtle ways.
+
+Review and test your changes as much as possible. Check the
+differences from the previous version repeatedly
+(
+DO NOT upload a package to the security upload queue without
+prior authorization from the security team. If the package does not
+exactly meet the team's requirements, it will cause many problems and
+delays in dealing with the unwanted upload.
+
+DO NOT upload your fix to proposed-updates without
+coordinating with the security team. Packages from
+security.debian.org will be copied into the proposed-updates directory
+automatically. If a package with the same or a higher version number
+is already installed into the archive, the security update will be
+rejected by the archive system. That way, the stable distribution
+will end up without a security update for this package instead.
+
+Once you have created and tested the new package and it has been
+approved by the security team, it needs to be uploaded so that it can
+be installed in the archives. For security uploads, the place to
+upload to is
+ftp://security.debian.org/pub/SecurityUploadQueue/ .
+
+
+Once an upload to the security queue has been accepted, the package
+will automatically be rebuilt for all architectures and stored for
+verification by the security team.
+
+
+Uploads which are waiting for acceptance or verification are only
+accessible by the security team. This is necessary since there might
+be fixes for security problems that cannot be disclosed yet.
+
+
+If a member of the security team accepts a package, it will be
+installed on security.debian.org as well as the proper
+distribution-proposed-updates on ftp-master or in the non-US
+archive.
@@ -2547,10 +2864,11 @@ been accepted into the Debian archive. Therefore, once you get
notification that your updated package has been installed into the
archive, you can and should close the bug in the BTS.
-If you are using a new version of
-If you want to close bugs the old fashioned, manual way, it is usually
-sufficient to mail the
+Bear in mind that it is not obligatory to close bugs using the changelog
+like described above -- if you simply want to close bugs that don't have
+anything to do with an upload of yours, do it simply by emailing an
+explanation to
-You should periodically get the new
-Debian's quality is largely due to its Policy that all packages
-follow. But it's also because we accumulated years of experience
-in packaging; very talented people created great tools to make
-good packages without much troubles.
+Debian's quality is largely due to the
-This chapter provides the best known solutions to common problems
-faced during packaging. It also lists various advice collected on
-several mailing lists. By following them, you will make Debian's quality
-even better.
-
-
+The following recommendations apply to the
-To help you in your packaging effort, you can use helper scripts.
-The best scripts available are provided by
-debhelper is very useful because it lets you follow the latest Debian policy
-without doing many modifications since the changes that can be automated are
-almost always automatically done by a debhelper script. Furthermore it
-offers enough flexibility to be able to use it in conjunction with
-some hand crafted shell invocations within the
-You can however decide to not use any helper script, and still write
-some very good
+Helper scripts take care of these issues. Assuming you comply with
+the conventions expected by the helper script, the helper takes care
+of all the details. Changes in policy can be made in the helper
+script, then packages just need to be rebuilt with the new version of
+the helper and no other changes.
+
-Big packages tend to have many upstream bugs that you want to fix within
-the Debian package. If you just correct the bug in the source, all the
-fixes are directly integrated in the
-The good solution is to keep separate patches within the
-
-Additionally, dbs provides facilities to create the patches and to keep
-track of what they are for.
+Debconf is a great tool but it is often poorly used. Many common mistakes
+are listed in the
-A single source package will often build several binary packages, either
-to provide several flavors of the same software (examples are the
-vim-* packages) or to make several small packages instead of a big one
-(it's interesting if the user doesn't need all the packages and can thus
-save some disk space).
-
-The second case can be easily managed by
-The first case is a bit more difficult since it involves multiple recompiles
-of the same software but with different configure options. The
-
-Like porters, translators have a difficult task. Since they work on many
-packages, they cannot keep track of every change in packages in order to
-be informed when a translated string is outdated. Fortunately
-
-Translators can use
-When building a binary package,
-When the package maintainer needs to update the templates file, he only
-changes
-Please see the page about
-
+Like porters, translators have a difficult task. They work on many
+packages and must collaborate with many different
+maintainers. Moreover, most of the time, they are not native English
+speakers, so you may need to be particularly patient with them.
+
+The goal of
+Using
+Internationalizing documentation is crucial for users, but a lot of
+labor. There's no way to eliminate all that work, but you can make things
+easier for translators.
+
+If you maintain documentation of any size, its easier for translators
+if they have access to a source control system. That lets translators
+see the differences between two versions of the documentation, so, for
+instance, they can see what needs to be retranslated. It is
+recommended that the translated documentation maintain a note about
+what source control revision the translation is based on. An
+interesting system is provided by
+If you maintain XML or SGML documentation, we suggest that you isolate
+any language-independant information and define those as entities in a
+separate file which is included by all the different
+translations. This makes it much easier, for instance, to keep URLs
+up-to-date across multiple files.
+
+Keeping
Libraries are always difficult to package for various reasons. The policy
imposes many constraints to ease their maintenance and to make sure
upgrades are as simple as possible when a new upstream version comes out.
-A breakage in a library can result in dozens of dependent packages to
-break...
+A breakage in a library can result in dozens of dependent packages
+breaking.
Good practices for library packaging have been grouped in
Several subsets of packages have special sub-policies and corresponding
packaging rules and practices:
-Debconf is a configuration management system, it is used by all the
-various packaging scripts (postinst mainly) to request feedback from the
-user concerning how to configure the package. Direct user interactions
-must now be avoided in favor of debconf interaction. This will enable
-non-interactive installations in the future.
-
-Debconf is a great tool but it is often badly used ... many common mistakes
-are listed in the
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ In the first two cases, the information is public and it is important
+ to have a fix as soon as possible. In the last case, however, it
+ might not be public information. In that case there are a few
+ possible options for dealing with the problem:
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
-
-