dpkg - Debian's package maintenance system The primary interface for the dpkg suite is the ‘dselect’ program; a more low-level and less user-friendly interface is available in the form of the ‘dpkg’ command. Releases -------- The current legacy, stable and development releases can be found at: <http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/dpkg/> For older releases check: <http://snapshot.debian.org/package/dpkg/> Mailing List ------------ The subscription interface and web archives can be found at: <https://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/> The mailing list address is (no subscription required to post): debian-dpkg@lists.debian.org Source Repository ----------------- <https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/dpkg/dpkg.git> <git://anonscm.debian.org/dpkg/dpkg.git> Building from git source ------------------------ To prepare the dpkg source tree from git before starting the build process some required software needs to be installed: GNU autoconf >= 2.60 GNU automake >= 1.11 GNU libtool >= 2.0 GNU gettext >= 0.18.2 (or just autopoint if using --disable-nls) flex After installing the needed software, and running the following command on the git tree: $ autoreconf -f -i the source should be roughly equivalent to the distributed tar source. Building from tar source ------------------------ The minimum software required to configure and build dpkg from a tarball is: C89 compiler with few C99 extensions (see doc/coding-style.txt) GNU make pkg-config perl To enable optional functionality or programs, this software might be needed: zlib (used instead of gzip command-line tool) xz's liblzma (used instead of xz command-line tool) libbzip2 (used instead of bzip2 command-line tool) libselinux curses compatible library (needed on --enable-dselect) To run the test suite («make check»): TimeDate perl module IO-String perl module Test::Pod perl module (optional) Test::Perl::Critic perl module (optional) Perl::Critic::Utils perl module (optional) Define the environment variable DPKG_DEVEL_MODE to run the test suite in development mode, to include tests that might not be pertinent during normal release builds. To enable additional developer's documentation («make doc») this software will be needed: pod2man doxygen dot To enable translated documentation this software will be needed: po4a >= 0.36.4 (>= 0.41 for VPATH builds) To enable code coverage («./configure --enable-coverage; make coverage») this software is needed: lcov (from the Linux Test Project) Devel-Cover perl module The build process is done by running the usual «./configure; make». To see all available configuration options please run «./configure --help». The following configure options might be of interest to disable specific programs: --disable-dselect --disable-start-stop-daemon --disable-update-alternatives And the following to disable modifications to the build flags: --disable-compiler-warnings --disable-compiler-optimisations --disable-linker-optimisations