deb-version - Debian package version number format
[
epoch:]
upstream-version[
-debian-revision]
Version numbers as used for Debian binary and source packages consist of three
components. These are:
- epoch
- This is a single (generally small) unsigned integer. It may
be omitted, in which case zero is assumed. If it is omitted then the
upstream-version may not contain any colons.
It is provided to allow mistakes in the version numbers of older versions of
a package, and also a package's previous version numbering schemes, to be
left behind.
- upstream-version
- This is the main part of the version number. It is usually
the version number of the original (“upstream”) package from
which the .deb file has been made, if this is applicable. Usually
this will be in the same format as that specified by the upstream
author(s); however, it may need to be reformatted to fit into the package
management system's format and comparison scheme.
The comparison behavior of the package management system with respect to the
upstream-version is described below. The upstream-version
portion of the version number is mandatory.
The upstream-version may contain only alphanumerics
(“A-Za-z0-9”) and the characters . + -
: ~ (full stop, plus, hyphen, colon, tilde) and should start
with a digit. If there is no debian-revision then hyphens are not
allowed; if there is no epoch then colons are not allowed.
- debian-revision
- This part of the version number specifies the version of
the Debian package based on the upstream version. It may contain only
alphanumerics and the characters + . ~ (plus, full
stop, tilde) and is compared in the same way as the
upstream-version is.
It is optional; if it isn't present then the upstream-version may not
contain a hyphen. This format represents the case where a piece of
software was written specifically to be turned into a Debian package, and
so there is only one “debianization” of it and therefore no
revision indication is required.
It is conventional to restart the debian-revision at
‘1’ each time the upstream-version is increased.
Dpkg will break the version number apart at the last hyphen in the string
(if there is one) to determine the upstream-version and
debian-revision. The absence of a debian-revision compares
earlier than the presence of one (but note that the debian-revision
is the least significant part of the version number).
The
upstream-version and
debian-revision parts are compared by the
package management system using the same algorithm:
The strings are compared from left to right.
First the initial part of each string consisting entirely of non-digit
characters is determined. These two parts (one of which may be empty) are
compared lexically. If a difference is found it is returned. The lexical
comparison is a comparison of ASCII values modified so that all the letters
sort earlier than all the non-letters and so that a tilde sorts before
anything, even the end of a part. For example, the following parts are in
sorted order: ‘~~’, ‘~~a’, ‘~’, the
empty part, ‘a’.
Then the initial part of the remainder of each string which consists entirely of
digit characters is determined. The numerical values of these two parts are
compared, and any difference found is returned as the result of the
comparison. For these purposes an empty string (which can only occur at the
end of one or both version strings being compared) counts as zero.
These two steps (comparing and removing initial non-digit strings and initial
digit strings) are repeated until a difference is found or both strings are
exhausted.
Note that the purpose of epochs is to allow us to leave behind mistakes in
version numbering, and to cope with situations where the version numbering
scheme changes. It is
not intended to cope with version numbers
containing strings of letters which the package management system cannot
interpret (such as ‘ALPHA’ or ‘pre-’), or with
silly orderings.
The tilde character and its special sorting properties were introduced in dpkg
1.10 and some parts of the dpkg build scripts only gained support for it later
in the 1.10.x series.
deb-control(5),
deb(5),
dpkg(1)