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1.1 Scope
=========

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

This manual also describes Debian policy as it relates to creating
Debian packages.  It is not a tutorial on how to build packages, nor is
it exhaustive where it comes to describing the behavior of the packaging
system.  Instead, this manual attempts to define the interface to the
package management system with which the developers must be conversant.
(1)

This manual cannot and does not prohibit every possible bug or
undesirable behaviour.  The fact that something is not forbidden by
Debian policy does not mean that it is not a bug, let alone that it is
desirable.  Questions not covered by policy should be evaluated on their
merits.

The footnotes present in this manual are merely informative, and are not
part of Debian policy itself.

The appendices to this manual are not necessarily normative, either.
Please see Note: Introduction and scope of these appendices. for more
information.

In the normative part of this manual, the words `must', `should' and
`may', and the adjectives `required', `recommended' and `optional', are
used to distinguish the significance of the various guidelines in this
policy document.  Packages that do not conform to the guidelines denoted
by `must' (or `required') will generally not be considered acceptable
for the Debian distribution.  Non-conformance with guidelines denoted by
`should' (or `recommended') will generally be considered a bug, but will
not necessarily render a package unsuitable for distribution.
Guidelines denoted by `may' (or `optional') are truly optional and
adherence is left to the maintainer’s discretion.

These classifications are roughly equivalent to the bug severities
`serious' (for `must' or `required' directive violations), `minor',
`normal' or `important' (for `should' or `recommended' directive
violations) and `wishlist' (for `optional' items).  (2)

Much of the information presented in this manual will be useful even
when building a package which is to be distributed in some other way or
is intended for local use only.

udebs (stripped-down binary packages used by the Debian Installer) do
not comply with all of the requirements discussed here.  See the Debian
Installer internals manual(3) for more information about them.

   ---------- Footnotes ----------

   (1) Informally, the criteria used for inclusion is that the material
meet one of the following requirements:

Standard interfaces

     The material presented represents an interface to the packaging
     system that is mandated for use, and is used by, a significant
     number of packages, and therefore should not be changed without
     peer review.  Package maintainers can then rely on this interface
     not changing, and the package management software authors need to
     ensure compatibility with this interface definition.  (Control file
     and changelog file formats are examples.)

Chosen Convention

     If there are a number of technically viable choices that can be
     made, but one needs to select one of these options for
     inter-operability.  The version number format is one example.

Please note that these are not mutually exclusive; selected conventions
often become parts of standard interfaces.

   (2) Compare RFC 2119.  Note, however, that these words are used in a
different way in this document.

   (3) https://d-i.debian.org/doc/internals/ch03.html