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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FIELDS | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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dsc(5) dpkg suite dsc(5)
dsc - Debian source package control file format
filename.dsc
Each Debian source package is composed of a .dsc control file,
which contains a number of fields, in deb822(5) format.
Each field begins with a tag, such as Source or Binary (case
insensitive), followed by a colon, and the body of the field (case
sensitive unless stated otherwise). Fields are delimited only by
field tags. In other words, field text may be multiple lines in
length, but the installation tools will generally join lines when
processing the body of the field (except in case of the multiline
fields Package-List, Files, Checksums-Sha1 and Checksums-Sha256,
see below).
The control data might be enclosed in an OpenPGP ASCII Armored
signature, as specified in RFC9580.
Format: format-version (required)
The value of this field declares the format version of the
source package. The field value is used by programs acting on
a source package to interpret the list of files in the source
package and determine how to unpack it. The syntax of the
field value is a numeric major revision (“0-9”), a period
(“.”), a numeric minor revision (“0-9”), and then an optional
subtype after whitespace (“ \t”), which if specified is a
lowercase alphanumeric (“a-z0-9”) word in parentheses (“()”).
The subtype is optional in the syntax but may be mandatory for
particular source format revisions.
The source formats currently supported by dpkg are 1.0, 2.0,
3.0 (native), 3.0 (quilt), 3.0 (git), 3.0 (bzr) and 3.0
(custom). See dpkg-source(1) for their description.
Source: source-name (required)
The value of this field determines the package name, and is
used to generate file names by most installation tools.
Binary: binary-package-list
This folded field lists binary packages which this source
package can produce, separated by commas.
This field has now been superseded by the Package-List field,
which gives enough information about what binary packages are
produced on which architecture, build-profile and other
involved restrictions.
Architecture: arch-list (recommended)
A list of architectures and architecture wildcards separated
by spaces which specify the type of hardware this package can
be compiled for. Common architecture names and architecture
wildcards are amd64, armel, i386, linux-any, any-amd64, etc.
Note that the all value is meant for packages that are
architecture independent, and any for packages that are
architecture dependent. The list may include (or consist
solely of) the special value all. When the list contains the
architecture wildcard any, the only other value allowed in the
list is all.
The field value is generally generated from Architecture
fields from in the debian/control in the source package.
Version: version-string (required)
Typically, this is the original package's version number in
whatever form the program's author uses. It may also include
a Debian revision number (for non-native packages). The exact
format and sorting algorithm are described in deb-version(7).
Note: On some vendors, dpkg has been made to permit native
sources with non-native versions, making this incoherent and
adding to the confusion of the concept, where in addition this
tends to be a trap for accidental mistakes.
Origin: name
The name of the distribution this package is originating from.
Maintainer: fullname-email (recommended)
Should be in the format “Joe Bloggs <[email protected]>”, and is
typically the person who created the package, as opposed to
the author of the software that was packaged.
Uploaders: fullname-email-list
Lists all the names and email addresses of co-maintainers of
the package, in the same format as the Maintainer field.
Multiple co-maintainers should be separated by a comma.
Description short-description
long-description
The format for the source package description is a short brief
summary on the first line (after the Description field). The
following lines should be used as a longer, more detailed
description. Each line of the long description must be
preceded by a space, and blank lines in the long description
must contain a single ‘.’ following the preceding space.
Homepage: url
The upstream project home page url.
Standards-Version: version-string (recommended)
This documents the most recent version of the distribution
policy standards this package complies with.
Vcs-Browser: url
The url of a web interface to browse the Version Control
System repository.
Vcs-Arch: url
Vcs-Bzr: url
Vcs-Cvs: url
Vcs-Darcs: url
Vcs-Git: url
Vcs-Hg: url
Vcs-Mtn: url
Vcs-Svn: url
These fields declare the url of the Version Control System
repository used to maintain this package. See
deb-src-control(5) for more details.
Testsuite: name-list
This field declares that the source package contains the
specified test suites. The value is a comma-separated list of
test suites. If the autopkgtest value is present, a
debian/tests/control is expected to be present, if the file is
present but not the value, then dpkg-source will automatically
add it, preserving previous values.
Testsuite-Triggers: package-list
This field declares the comma-separated union of all test
dependencies (Depends fields in debian/tests/control file),
with all restrictions removed, and OR dependencies flattened
(that is, converted to separate AND relationships), except for
binaries generated by this source package and its
meta-dependency equivalent @.
Rationale: this field is needed because otherwise to be able
to get the test dependencies, each source package would need
to be unpacked.
Build-Depends: package-list
Build-Depends-Arch: package-list
Build-Depends-Indep: package-list
Build-Conflicts: package-list
Build-Conflicts-Arch: package-list
Build-Conflicts-Indep: package-list
These fields declare relationships between the source package
and packages used to build it. They are discussed in the
deb-src-control(5) manual page.
Package-List:
package package-type section priority key-value-list
This multiline field contains a list of binary packages
generated by this source package.
The package is the binary package name.
The package-type is the binary package type, usually deb,
another common value is udeb.
The section and priority match the binary package fields of
the same name, or if omitted default to unknown and optional
respectively (since dpkg 1.22.13).
The key-value-list is a space separated key=value list, and
the currently known optional keys are:
arch
The architecture restriction from the binary package
Architecture field, with spaces converted to ‘,’.
profile
The normalized build-profile restriction formula from the
binary package Build-Profile field, with ORs converted to
‘+’ and ANDs to ‘,’.
protected
If the binary package is protected, this key will contain
the value of the Protected field, that is a yes value.
Supported since dpkg 1.20.1.
essential
If the binary package is essential, this key will contain
the value of the Essential field, that is a yes value.
Files: (required, weak)
Checksums-Sha1: (required, weak)
Checksums-Sha256: (required, strong)
checksum size filename
These multiline fields contain a list of files with a checksum
and size for each one. These fields have the same syntax and
differ only in the checksum algorithm used: MD5 for Files,
SHA-1 for Checksums-Sha1 and SHA-256 for Checksums-Sha256.
The first line of the field value (the part on the same line
as the field name followed by a colon) is always empty. The
content of the field is expressed as continuation lines, one
line per file. Each line consists of the checksum, a space,
the file size, a space, and the file name.
These fields list all files that make up the source package.
The list of files in these fields must match the list of files
in the other related fields.
Note: The MD5 and SHA-1 checksums are considered weak, and
should never be assumed to be sufficient for secure
verification.
The Format field conflates the format for the .dsc file itself and
the format of the extracted source package.
deb822(5), deb-src-control(5), deb-version(7), dpkg-source(1).
This page is part of the dpkg (Debian Package Manager) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=dpkg⟩. This
page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository ⟨git
clone https://git.dpkg.org/git/dpkg/dpkg.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2025-08-06.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
1.22.19-74-gf1ca0 2025-05-18 dsc(5)
Pages that refer to this page: dpkg-source(1), deb-src-control(5)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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