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22.25 Version 3.8.1
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Released March, 2009.

3.8

     Care should be taken when adding functionality to essential and
     such additions create an obligation to support that functionality
     in essential forever unless significant work is done.

4.4

     Changelog files must be encoded in UTF-8.

4.4

     Some format requirements for changelog files are now “must” instead
     of “should.”

4.4.1

     Alternative changelog formats have been removed.  Debian only
     supports one changelog format for the Debian Archive.

4.9.1

     New nocheck option for DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS indicating any build-time
     test suite provided by the package should not be run.

5.1

     All control files must be encoded in UTF-8.

5.2

     ‘debian/control’ allows comment lines starting with # with no
     preceding whitespace.

9.3

     Init scripts ending in .sh are not handled specially.  They are not
     sourced and are not guaranteed to be run by ‘/bin/sh’ regardless of
     the #!  line.  This brings Policy in line with the long-standing
     behavior of the init system in Debian.

9.3.2

     The start action of an init script must exit successfully and not
     start the daemon again if it’s already running.

9.3.2

     ‘/var/run’ and ‘/var/lock’ may be mounted as temporary filesystems,
     and init scripts must therefore create any necessary subdirectories
     dynamically.

10.4

     ‘/bin/sh’ scripts may assume that local can take multiple variable
     arguments and supports assignment.

11.6

     User mailboxes may be mode 600 and owned by the user rather than
     mode 660, owned by user, and group mail.