27
Chapter 5
Control files and their fields
The package management system manipulates data represented in a common format, known
as control data, stored in control files. Control files are used for source packages, binary packages
and the
.changes
files which control the installation of uploaded files
1
.
5.1 Syntax of control files
A control file consists of one or more paragraphs of fields
2
. The paragraphs are separated
by blank lines. Some control files allow only one paragraph; others allow several, in which
case each paragraph usually refers to a different package. (For example, in source packages,
the first paragraph refers to the source package, and later paragraphs refer to binary packages
generated from the source.)
Each paragraph consists of a series of data fields; each field consists of the field name, followed
by a colon and then the data/value associated with that field. It ends at the end of the line.
Horizontal whitespace (spaces and tabs) may occur immediately before or after the value and
is ignored there; it is conventional to put a single space after the colon. For example, a field
might be:
Package: libc6
the field name is
Package
and the field value
libc6
.
Some fields' values may span several lines; in this case each continuation line must start with
a space or a tab. Any trailing spaces or tabs at the end of individual lines of a field value are
ignored.
Except where otherwise stated, only a single line of data is allowed and whitespace is not sig 
nificant in a field body. Whitespace must not appear inside names (of packages, architectures,
files or anything else) or version numbers, or between the characters of multi character version
relationships.
1
dpkg
's internal databases are in a similar format.
2
The paragraphs are also sometimes referred to as stanzas.






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