deb-old - old style Debian binary package format

The .deb format is the Debian binary package file format. This manual page
describes the old format, used before Debian 0.93. Please see deb(5) for
details of the new format.

FORMAT

The file is two lines of format information as ASCII text, followed by two
concatenated gzipped ustar files.

The first line is the format version number padded to 8 digits, and is
0.939000 for all old-format archives.

The second line is a decimal string (without leading zeroes) giving the
length of the first gzipped tarfile.

Each of these lines is terminated with a single newline character.

The first tarfile contains the control information, as a series of ordinary
files, described in Debian Packaging Manual, section 2.2. The file control
must be present, as it contains the core control information.

In some very old archives, the files in the control tarfile may optionally
be in a DEBIAN subdirectory. In that case, the DEBIAN subdirectory will be
in the control tarfile too, and the control tarfile will have only files in
that directory. Optionally the control tarfile may contain an entry for
`.', that is, the current directory.

The second gzipped tarfile is the filesystem archive, containing pathnames
relative to the root directory of the system to be installed on. The
pathnames do not have leading slashes.

SEE ALSO
deb(5), dpkg-deb(1), deb-control(5), Debian Packaging Manual.


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Index
NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
FORMAT
SEE ALSO

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This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 14:28:39 GMT, October 23, 2002