Glossary of important term defined in Debian Policy

Sources

---

Debian Glossary

The following glossary is written by topics. To search a specific term, use the search function of your browser.

From package to archive

Package

Package has a lot of different meaning. essentially:

Additionally:

Sometime package is used without any additional attribute, usually it refers to binary package, or sometime attribute it is not important, e.g. a package maintainer should maintain both source and binary version of own packages.

Additionally, sometime we see the Debian attribute (Debian package [http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-scope.html#s1.1 Policy:1.1], [http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Version Policy:5.6.12]). On documentation specific to Debian it is not really need, but it should be used when discussing different package types.

Note:

Source Package

source package ([http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-source.html Policy:4]). It contains upstream sources ... see dpkg-sources(1)

Two types:

Binary Package

binary package ([http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html Policy:3])

Section

Section [http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-subsections Policy:2.4]

Priority

Priority classifies ([http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-priorities Policy:2.5], [http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Priority Policy:5.6.6], Policy:4.3) package importance both on source and binary packages:

Architecture

Could describe also:

Architecture specification string

Architecture specification string ([http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Architecture Policy:5.6.8], [http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-customized-programs.html#s-arch-spec Policy:11.1]): one of the strings provided by dpkg-architecture -L

Sometime simply architecture (name) ([http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-controlsyntax Policy:5.1], [http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#s-depsyntax Policy:7.1])