Debian Developers' Manuals

Debian Policy Manual

This manual describes the policy requirements for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. This includes the structure and contents of the Debian archive, several design issues of the operating system, as well as technical requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in the distribution.

Authors: Ian Jackson, Christian Schwarz, David A. Morris
Maintainer: The Debian Policy group
Status: ready
Availability: Debian package debian-policy
Latest version:

The latest restructuredText source is available through the Git repository.

Proposed amendments to Policy

Supplemental Policy documentation:


Debian Developer's Reference

This manual describes procedures and resources for Debian maintainers. It describes how to become a new developer, the upload procedure, how to handle our bug tracking system, the mailing lists, Internet servers, etc.

This manual is thought as a reference manual for all Debian developers (newbies and old pros).

Authors: Ian Jackson, Christian Schwarz, Lucas Nussbaum, Raphaël Hertzog, Adam Di Carlo, Andreas Barth
Maintainer: Lucas Nussbaum, Hideki Yamane, Holger Levsen
Status: ready
Availability: Debian package developers-reference
Latest version:

The latest restructuredText source is available through the Git repository.


Guide for Debian Maintainers

This tutorial document describes the building of the Debian package to ordinary Debian users and prospective developers using the debmake command.

It is focused on the modern packaging style and comes with many simple examples.

This “Guide for Debian Maintainers” can be considered as the successor to the “Debian New Maintainers’ Guide”.

Authors: Osamu Aoki
Maintainer: Osamu Aoki
Status: ready
Availability: Debian package debmake-doc
Latest version:

The latest XML source is available through the Git repository.


Debian New Maintainers' Guide

This document will try to describe building of a Debian GNU/Linux package to the common Debian user (and wannabe developer) in common language, and well covered with working examples.

Unlike previous attempts, this one is based on debhelper and the new tools available to maintainers. The author is making every attempt to incorporate and unify previous efforts.

Authors: Josip Rodin, Osamu Aoki
Maintainer: Osamu Aoki
Status: outdated, use above “Guide for Debian Maintainers” (debmake-doc)
Availability: Debian package maint-guide
Latest version:

The latest XML source is available through the Git repository.


Introduction to Debian packaging

This tutorial is an introduction to Debian packaging. It teaches prospective developers how to modify existing packages, how to create their own packages, and how to interact with the Debian community. In addition to the main tutorial, it includes three practical sessions on modifying the grep package, and packaging the gnujump game and a Java library.

Authors: Lucas Nussbaum
Maintainer: Lucas Nussbaum
Status: ready
Availability: Debian package packaging-tutorial
Latest version:
  • English: [PDF]
  • German: [PDF]
  • Spanish: [PDF]
  • French: [PDF]
  • Japanese: [PDF]
  • Portuguese: [PDF]
  • Russian: [PDF]
  • Chinese: [PDF]
  • Chinese: [PDF]

The latest LaTeX source is available through the Git repository.


Debian Menu System

This manual describes the Debian Menu System and the menu package.

The menu package was inspired by the install-fvwm2-menu program from the old fvwm2 package. However, menu tries to provide a more general interface for menu building. With the update-menus command from this package, no package needs to be modified for every X window manager again, and it provides a unified interface for both text- and X-oriented programs.

Authors: Joost Witteveen, Joey Hess, Christian Schwarz
Maintainer: Joost Witteveen
Status: ready
Availability: Debian package menu HTML online

Debian Installer internals

This document is intended to make Debian Installer more accessible to new developers and as a central location to document technical information.

Authors: Frans Pop
Maintainer: Debian Installer team
Status: ready
Availability:

HTML online

DocBook XML source online


dbconfig-common documentation

This document is intended for package maintainers who maintain packages that require a working database. Instead of implementing the required logic themselves they can rely on dbconfig-common to ask the right questions during install, upgrade, reconfigure and deinstall for them and create and fill the database.

Authors: Sean Finney and Paul Gevers
Maintainer: Paul Gevers
Status: ready
Availability: Debian package dbconfig-common
Latest version:

The latest SGML source is available through the Git repository.

Additional also the design document is available.

dbapp-policy

A proposed policy for packages that depend on a working database.

Authors: Sean Finney
Maintainer: Paul Gevers
Status: draft
Availability: Debian package dbconfig-common
Latest version:

The latest SGML source is available through the Git repository.