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DEBCHANGE(1) General Commands Manual DEBCHANGE(1)
NAME
debchange - Tool for maintenance of the debian/changelog file in a source package
SYNOPSIS
debchange [options] [text ...]
dch [options] [text ...]
DESCRIPTION
debchange or its alias dch will add a new comment line to the Debian changelog in the cur-
rent source tree. This command must be run from within that tree. If the text of the
change is given on the command line, debchange will run in batch mode and simply add the
text, with line breaks as necessary, at the appropriate place in debian/changelog (or the
changelog specified by options, as described below). If the text given on the command
line is a null string, debchange will run in batch mode without adding any text. If the
text given on the command line is a space string, debchange will run in batch mode and add
a blank changelog entry. If no text is specified then debchange will run the editor as
determined by sensible-editor for you to edit the file. (The environment variables VISUAL
and EDITOR are used in this order to determine which editor to use.) Editors which under-
stand the +n option for starting the editing on a specified line will use this to move to
the correct line of the file for editing. If the editor is quit without modifying the
temporary file, debchange will exit without touching the existing changelog. Note that
the changelog is assumed to be encoded with the UTF-8 encoding. If it is not, problems
may occur. Please see the iconv(1) manpage to find out how to convert changelogs from
legacy encodings. Finally, a changelog or NEWS file can be created from scratch using the
--create option described below.
debchange also supports automatically producing bug-closing changelog entries, using the
--closes option. This will usually query the BTS, the Debian Bug Tracking System (see
https://bugs.debian.org/) to determine the title of the bug and the package in which it
occurs. This behaviour can be stopped by giving a --noquery option or by setting the con-
figuration variable DEBCHANGE_QUERY_BTS to no, as described below. In either case, the
editor (as described above) will always be invoked to give an opportunity to modify the
entries, and the changelog will be accepted whether or not modifications are made. An ex-
tra changelog entry can be given on the command line in addition to the closes entries.
At most one of --append, --increment, --edit, --release, and --newversion may be specified
as listed below. If no options are specified, debchange will use heuristics to guess
whether or not the package has been successfully released, and behave as if --increment
had been specified if the package has been released, or otherwise as if --append has been
specified.
Two different sets of heuristics can be used, as controlled by the --release-heuristic op-
tion or the DEBCHANGE_RELEASE_HEURISTIC configuration variable. The default changelog
heuristic assumes the package has been released unless its changelog contains UNRELEASED
in the distribution field. If this heuristic is enabled then the distribution will default
to UNRELEASED in new changelog entries, and the --mainttrailer option described below will
be automatically enabled. This can be useful if a package can be released by different
maintainers, or if you do not keep the upload logs. The alternate log heuristic determines
if a package has been released by looking for an appropriate dupload(1) or dput(1) log
file in the parent directory. A warning will be issued if the log file is found but a
successful upload is not recorded. This may be because the previous upload was performed
with a version of dupload prior to 2.1 or because the upload failed.
If either --increment or --newversion is used, the name and email for the new version will
be determined as follows. If the environment variable DEBFULLNAME is set, this will be
used for the maintainer full name; if not, then NAME will be checked. If the environment
variable DEBEMAIL is set, this will be used for the email address. If this variable has
the form "name <email>", then the maintainer name will also be taken from here if neither
DEBFULLNAME nor NAME is set. If this variable is not set, the same test is performed on
the environment variable EMAIL. Next, if the full name has still not been determined,
then use getpwuid(3) to determine the name from the password file. If this fails, use the
previous changelog entry. For the email address, if it has not been set from DEBEMAIL or
EMAIL, then look in /etc/mailname, then attempt to build it from the username and FQDN,
otherwise use the email address in the previous changelog entry. In other words, it's a
good idea to set DEBEMAIL and DEBFULLNAME when using this script.
Support is included for changelogs that record changes by multiple co-maintainers of a
package. If an entry is appended to the current version's entries, and the maintainer is
different from the maintainer who is listed as having done the previous entries, then
lines will be added to the changelog to tell which maintainers made which changes. Cur-
rently only one of the several such styles of recording this information is supported, in
which the name of the maintainer who made a set of changes appears on a line before the
changes, inside square brackets. This can be switched on and off using the --[no]multi-
maint option or the DEBCHANGE_MULTIMAINT configuration file option; the default is to en-
able it. Note that if an entry has already been marked in this way, then this option will
be silently ignored.
If the directory name of the source tree has the form package-version, then debchange will
also attempt to rename it if the (upstream) version number changes. This can be prevented
by using the --preserve command line or configuration file option as described below.
If --force-bad-version or --allow-lower-version is used, debchange will not stop if the
new version is less than the current one. This is especially useful while doing back-
ports.
Directory name checking
In common with several other scripts in the devscripts package, debchange will climb the
directory tree until it finds a debian/changelog file. As a safeguard against stray files
causing potential problems, it will examine the name of the parent directory once it finds
the debian/changelog file, and check that the directory name corresponds to the package
name. Precisely how it does this is controlled by two configuration file variables DE-
VSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_LEVEL and DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_REGEX, and their corresponding
command-line options --check-dirname-level and --check-dirname-regex.
DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_LEVEL can take the following values:
0 Never check the directory name.
1 Only check the directory name if we have had to change directory in our search for
debian/changelog. This is the default behaviour.
2 Always check the directory name.
The directory name is checked by testing whether the current directory name (as determined
by pwd(1)) matches the regex given by the configuration file option DE-
VSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_REGEX or by the command line option --check-dirname-regex regex.
Here regex is a Perl regex (see perlre(3perl)), which will be anchored at the beginning
and the end. If regex contains a '/', then it must match the full directory path. If
not, then it must match the full directory name. If regex contains the string 'PACKAGE',
this will be replaced by the source package name, as determined from the changelog. The
default value for the regex is: 'PACKAGE(-.+)?', thus matching directory names such as
PACKAGE and PACKAGE-version.
The default changelog to be edited is debian/changelog; however, this can be changed using
the --changelog or --news options or the CHANGELOG environment variable, as described be-
low.
OPTIONS
--append, -a
Add a new changelog entry at the end of the current version's entries.
--increment, -i
Increment either the final component of the Debian release number or, if this is a
native Debian package, the version number. On Ubuntu or Tanglu, this will also
change the suffix from buildX to ubuntu1/tanglu1. Use -R, --rebuild for a no
change rebuild increment. This creates a new section at the beginning of the
changelog with appropriate headers and footers. Also, if this is a new version of
a native Debian package, the directory name is changed to reflect this. If DE-
BCHANGE_RELEASE_HEURISTIC is changelog (default) and the current release is UNRE-
LEASED, this will only change the version of the current changelog stanza. Other-
wise, this will create a new changelog stanza with the new version.
--newversion version, -v version
This specifies the version number (including the Debian release part) explicitly
and behaves as the --increment option in other respects. It will also change the
directory name if the upstream version number has changed. If DEBCHANGE_RE-
LEASE_HEURISTIC is changelog (default) and the current release is UNRELEASED, this
will only change the version of the current changelog stanza. Otherwise, this will
create a new changelog stanza with the new version.
--edit, -e
Edit the changelog in an editor.
--release, -r
Finalize the changelog for a release. Update the changelog timestamp. If the dis-
tribution is set to UNRELEASED, change it to the distribution from the previous
changelog entry (or another distribution as specified by --distribution). If there
are no previous changelog entries and an explicit distribution has not been speci-
fied, unstable will be used (or the name of the current development release when
run under Ubuntu).
--force-save-on-release
When --release is used, an editor is opened to allow inspection of the changelog.
The user is required to save the file to accept the modified changelog, otherwise
the original will be kept (default).
--no-force-save-on-release
Do not do so. Note that a dummy changelog entry may be supplied in order to achieve
the same effect - e.g. debchange --release "". The entry will not be added to the
changelog but its presence will suppress the editor.
--create
This will create a new debian/changelog file (or NEWS if the --news option is
used). You must be in the top-level directory to use this; no directory name
checking will be performed. The package name and version can either be specified
using the --package and --newversion options, determined from the directory name
using the --fromdirname option or entered manually into the generated changelog
file. The maintainer name is determined from the environment if this is possible,
and the distribution is specified either using the --distribution option or in the
generated changelog file.
--empty
When used in combination with --create, suppress the automatic addition of an "ini-
tial release" changelog entry (so that the next invocation of debchange adds the
first entry). Note that this will cause a dpkg-parsechangelog warning on the next
invocation due to the lack of changes.
--package package
This specifies the package name to be used in the new changelog; this may only be
used in conjunction with the --create, --increment and --newversion options.
--nmu, -n
Increment the Debian release number for a non-maintainer upload by either appending
a ".1" to a non-NMU version number (unless the package is Debian native, in which
case "+nmu1" is appended) or by incrementing an NMU version number, and add an NMU
changelog comment. This happens automatically if the packager is neither in the
Maintainer nor the Uploaders field in debian/control, unless DEBCHANGE_AUTO_NMU is
set to no or the --no-auto-nmu option is used.
--bin-nmu
Increment the Debian release number for a binary non-maintainer upload by either
appending a "+b1" to a non-binNMU version number or by incrementing a binNMU ver-
sion number, and add a binNMU changelog comment.
--qa, -q
Increment the Debian release number for a Debian QA Team upload, and add a QA up-
load changelog comment.
--rebuild, -R
Increment the Debian release number for a no-change rebuild by appending a "build1"
or by incrementing a rebuild version number.
--security, -s
Increment the Debian release number for a Debian Security Team non-maintainer up-
load, and add a Security Team upload changelog comment.
--lts Increment the Debian release number for a LTS Security Team non-maintainer upload,
and add a LTS Security Team upload changelog comment.
--team Increment the Debian release number for a team upload, and add a Team upload
changelog comment.
--upstream, -U
Don't append distro-name1 to the version on a derived distribution. Increment the
Debian version.
--bpo Increment the Debian release number for an upload to buster-backports, and add a
backport upload changelog comment.
--stable
Increment the Debian release number for an upload to the current stable release.
--local, -lsuffix
Add a suffix to the Debian version number for a local build.
--force-bad-version, -b
Force a version number to be less than the current one (e.g., when backporting).
--allow-lower-version pattern
Allow a version number to be less than the current one if the new version matches
the specified pattern.
--force-distribution
Force the provided distribution to be used, even if it doesn't match the list of
known distributions (e.g. for unofficial distributions).
--auto-nmu
Attempt to automatically determine whether a change to the changelog represents a
Non Maintainer Upload. This is the default.
--no-auto-nmu
Disable automatic NMU detection. Equivalent to setting DEBCHANGE_AUTO_NMU to no.
--fromdirname, -d
This will take the upstream version number from the directory name, which should be
of the form package-version. If the upstream version number has increased from the
most recent changelog entry, then a new entry will be made with version number ver-
sion-1 (or version if the package is Debian native), with the same epoch as the
previous package version. If the upstream version number is the same, this option
will behave in the same way as -i.
--closes nnnnn[,nnnnn ...]
Add changelog entries to close the specified bug numbers. Also invoke the editor
after adding these entries. Will generate warnings if the BTS cannot be contacted
(and --noquery has not been specified), or if there are problems with the bug re-
port located.
--[no]query
Should we attempt to query the BTS when generating closes entries?
--preserve, -p
Preserve the source tree directory name if the upstream version number (or the ver-
sion number of a Debian native package) changes. See also the configuration vari-
ables section below.
--no-preserve, --nopreserve
Do not preserve the source tree directory name (default).
--vendor vendor
Override the distributor ID over the default returned by dpkg-vendor. This name is
used for heuristics applied to new package versions and for sanity checking of the
target distribution.
--distribution dist, -D dist
Use the specified distribution in the changelog entry being edited, instead of us-
ing the previous changelog entry's distribution for new entries or the existing
value for existing entries.
--urgency urgency, -u urgency
Use the specified urgency in the changelog entry being edited, instead of using the
default "medium" for new entries or the existing value for existing entries.
--changelog file, -c file
This will edit the changelog file instead of the standard debian/changelog. This
option overrides any CHANGELOG environment variable setting. Also, no directory
traversing or checking will be performed when this option is used.
--news [newsfile]
This will edit newsfile (by default, debian/NEWS) instead of the regular changelog.
Directory searching will be performed. The changelog will be examined in order to
determine the current package version.
--[no]multimaint
Should we indicate that parts of a changelog entry have been made by different
maintainers? Default is yes; see the discussion above and also the DEBCHANGE_MUL-
TIMAINT configuration file option below.
--[no]multimaint-merge
Should all changes made by the same author be merged into the same changelog sec-
tion? Default is no; see the discussion above and also the DEBCHANGE_MULTI-
MAINT_MERGE configuration file option below.
--maintmaint, -m
Do not modify the maintainer details previously listed in the changelog. This is
useful particularly for sponsors wanting to automatically add a sponsorship message
without disrupting the other changelog details. Note that there may be some inter-
esting interactions if multi-maintainer mode is in use; you will probably wish to
check the changelog manually before uploading it in such cases.
--controlmaint, -M
Use maintainer details from the debian/control Maintainer field rather than rele-
vant environment variables (DEBFULLNAME, DEBEMAIL, etc.). This option might be
useful to restore details of the main maintainer in the changelog trailer after a
bogus edit (e.g. when -m was intended but forgot) or when releasing a package in
the name of the main maintainer (e.g. the team).
--[no]mainttrailer, -t
If mainttrailer is set, it will avoid modifying the existing changelog trailer line
(i.e. the maintainer and date-stamp details), unless used with options that require
the trailer to be modified (e.g. --create, --release, -i, --qa, etc.) This option
differs from --maintmaint in that it will use multi-maintainer mode if appropriate,
with the exception of editing the trailer. See also the DEBCHANGE_MAINTTRAILER con-
figuration file option below.
--check-dirname-level N
See the above section "Directory name checking" for an explanation of this option.
--check-dirname-regex regex
See the above section "Directory name checking" for an explanation of this option.
--no-conf, --noconf
Do not read any configuration files. This can only be used as the first option
given on the command-line.
--release-heuristic log|changelog
Controls how debchange determines if a package has been released, when deciding
whether to create a new changelog entry or append to an existing changelog entry.
--help, -h
Display a help message and exit successfully.
--version
Display version and copyright information and exit successfully.
CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
The two configuration files /etc/devscripts.conf and ~/.devscripts are sourced in that or-
der to set configuration variables. Command line options can be used to override configu-
ration file settings. Environment variable settings are ignored for this purpose. The
currently recognised variables are:
DEBCHANGE_PRESERVE
If this is set to yes, then it is the same as the --preserve command line parameter
being used.
DEBCHANGE_QUERY_BTS
If this is set to no, then it is the same as the --noquery command line parameter
being used.
DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_LEVEL, DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_REGEX
See the above section "Directory name checking" for an explanation of these vari-
ables. Note that these are package-wide configuration variables, and will there-
fore affect all devscripts scripts which check their value, as described in their
respective manpages and in devscripts.conf(5).
DEBCHANGE_RELEASE_HEURISTIC
Controls how debchange determines if a package has been released, when deciding
whether to create a new changelog entry or append to an existing changelog entry.
Can be either log or changelog.
DEBCHANGE_MULTIMAINT
If set to no, debchange will not introduce multiple-maintainer distinctions when a
different maintainer appends an entry to an existing changelog. See the discussion
above. Default is yes.
DEBCHANGE_MULTIMAINT_MERGE
If set to yes, when adding changes in multiple-maintainer mode debchange will check
whether previous changes by the current maintainer exist and add the new changes to
the existing block rather than creating a new block. Default is no.
DEBCHANGE_MAINTTRAILER
If this is set to no, then it is the same as the --nomainttrailer command line pa-
rameter being used.
DEBCHANGE_TZ
Use this timezone for changelog entries. Default is the user/system timezone as
shown by `date -R` and affected by the environment variable TZ.
DEBCHANGE_LOWER_VERSION_PATTERN
If this is set, then it is the same as the --allow-lower-version command line pa-
rameter being used.
DEBCHANGE_AUTO_NMU
If this is set to no then debchange will not attempt to automatically determine
whether the current changelog stanza represents an NMU. The default is yes. See
the discussion of the --nmu option above.
DEBCHANGE_FORCE_SAVE_ON_RELEASE
If this is set to no, then it is the same as the --no-force-save-on-release command
line parameter being used.
DEBCHANGE_VENDOR
Use this vendor instead of the default (dpkg-vendor output). See --vendor for de-
tails.
ENVIRONMENT
DEBEMAIL, EMAIL, DEBFULLNAME, NAME
See the above description of the use of these environment variables.
CHANGELOG
This variable specifies the changelog to edit in place of debian/changelog. No di-
rectory traversal or checking is performed when this variable is set. This vari-
able is overridden by the --changelog command-line setting.
VISUAL, EDITOR
These environment variables (in this order) determine the editor used by sensible-
editor.
SEE ALSO
debc(1), debclean(1), dput(1), dupload(1), devscripts.conf(5)
AUTHOR
The original author was Christoph Lameter <clameter AT debian.org>. Many substantial changes
and improvements were made by Julian Gilbey <jdg AT debian.org>.
DEBIAN Debian Utilities DEBCHANGE(1)
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