man > dpkg-parsechangelog(1)

man perldoc info pydoc3 ri search

📛 NAME

dpkg-parsechangelog - parse Debian changelog files

🚀 Quick Reference

Use Case	Command	Description
Parse default changelog	dpkg-parsechangelog	Output machine‑readable info for the latest entry
Specify changelog file	dpkg-parsechangelog -l path/to/changelog	Read from a specific file
Show only the Version field	dpkg-parsechangelog -S Version	Extract a single field value
Output in RFC822 format	dpkg-parsechangelog --format rfc822	One paragraph per entry
Include all entries	dpkg-parsechangelog --all	List all changelog entries
Reverse order	dpkg-parsechangelog --reverse	Show oldest entry first
Entries since version	dpkg-parsechangelog -s 1.0-1	Changes after 1.0‑1
Last N entries	dpkg-parsechangelog -c 5	Show top 5 entries

📖 SYNOPSIS

dpkg-parsechangelog [option...]

📝 DESCRIPTION

dpkg-parsechangelog reads and parses the changelog of an unpacked Debian source tree and outputs the information in it to standard output in a machine‑readable form.

⚙️ OPTIONS

📄 -l, --file changelog-file

Specifies the changelog file to read information from. A ‘-’ can be used to specify reading from standard input. The default is debian/changelog.

🏷️ -F changelog-format

Specifies the format of the changelog. By default the format is read from a special line near the bottom of the changelog or failing that defaults to the debian standard format. See also CHANGELOG FORMATS.

📚 -L libdir

Obsolete option without effect (since dpkg 1.18.8). Setting the perl environment variables PERL5LIB or PERLLIB has a similar effect when looking for the parser perl modules.

🔍 -S, --show-field field

Specifies the name of the field to show (since dpkg 1.17.0). The field name is not printed, only its value.

❓ -?, --help

Show the usage message and exit.

📌 --version

Show the version and exit.

🔧 Parser Options

The following options can be used to influence the output of the changelog parser, e.g. the range of entries or the format of the output.

🎨 --format output-format

Set the output format. Currently supported values are dpkg and rfc822. dpkg is the classic output format (from before this option existed) and the default. It consists of one paragraph in Debian control format (see deb-control(5)). If more than one entry is requested, then most fields are taken from the first entry (usually the most recent entry), except otherwise stated:

📦 Source: pkg-name
📌 Version: version
🎯 Distribution: target-distribution
⚠️ Urgency: urgency — The highest urgency of all included entries is used, followed by the concatenated (space‑separated) comments from all the versions requested.
👤 Maintainer: author
📅 Date: date — The date of the entry as a string, as it appears in the changelog. With a strptime(3) format "%a, %d %b %Y %T %z", but where the day of the week might not actually correspond to the real day obtained from the rest of the date string. If you need a more accurate representation of the date, use the Timestamp field.
⏲️ Timestamp: timestamp — The date of the entry as a timestamp in seconds since the epoch (since dpkg 1.18.8). Take into account it might not be possible to map it back to the exact value in this field.
🐛 Closes: bug-number — The Closes fields of all included entries are merged.
📝 Changes: changelog-entries — The text of all changelog entries is concatenated. To make this field a valid Debian control format multiline field empty lines are replaced with a single full stop and all lines are indented by one space character. The exact content depends on the changelog format.

The Version, Distribution, Urgency, Maintainer and Changes fields are mandatory.

There might be additional user‑defined fields present.

The rfc822 format uses the same fields but outputs a separate paragraph for each changelog entry so that all metadata for each entry is preserved.

🔄 --reverse

Include all changes in reverse order (since dpkg 1.19.1).

Note: For the dpkg format the first entry will be the most ancient entry.

📋 --all

Include all changes. Note: Other options have no effect when this is in use.

⏩ -s, --since version, -v version

Include all changes later than version.

⏪ -u, --until version

Include all changes earlier than version.

↗️ -f, --from version

Include all changes equal or later than version.

↘️ -t, --to version

Include all changes up to or equal than version.

🔢 -c, --count number, -n number

Include number entries from the top (or the tail if number is lower than 0).

🔢 -o, --offset number

Change the starting point for --count, counted from the top (or the tail if number is lower than 0).

📓 CHANGELOG FORMATS

It is possible to use a different format to the standard one, by providing a parser for that alternative format.

In order to have dpkg-parsechangelog run the new parser, a line must be included within the last 40 lines of the changelog file, matching the Perl regular expression:

\schangelog-format:\s+([0-9a-z]+)\W

The part in parentheses should be the name of the format. For example:

@@@ changelog-format: otherformat @@@

Changelog format names are non‑empty strings of lowercase alphanumerics (“a‑z0‑9”).

If such a line exists then dpkg-parsechangelog will look for the parser as a Dpkg::Changelog::Otherformat perl module; it is an error for it not being present. The parser name in the perl module will be automatically capitalized. The default changelog format is debian, and a parser for it is provided by default.

The parser should be derived from the Dpkg::Changelog class and implement the required documented interface.

If the changelog format which is being parsed always or almost always leaves a blank line between individual change notes, these blank lines should be stripped out, so as to make the resulting output compact.

If the changelog format does not contain date or package name information this information should be omitted from the output. The parser should not attempt to synthesize it or find it from other sources.

If the changelog does not have the expected format the parser should error out, rather than trying to muddle through and possibly generating incorrect output.

A changelog parser may not interact with the user at all.

📝 NOTES

All Parser Options except for -v are only supported since dpkg 1.14.16.

Short option parsing with non‑bundled values available only since dpkg 1.18.0.

🌍 ENVIRONMENT

DPKG_COLORS — Sets the color mode (since dpkg 1.18.5). The currently accepted values are: auto (default), always and never.

DPKG_NLS — If set, it will be used to decide whether to activate Native Language Support, also known as internationalization (or i18n) support (since dpkg 1.19.0). The accepted values are: 0 and 1 (default).

📁 FILES

debian/changelog — The changelog file, used to obtain version‑dependent information about the source package, such as the urgency and distribution of an upload, the changes made since a particular release, and the source version number itself.

📚 SEE ALSO

📘 deb-changelog(5)

1.21.1
2025‑09‑09
dpkg-parsechangelog(1)

📛 NAME 🚀 Quick Reference 📖 SYNOPSIS 📝 DESCRIPTION ⚙️ OPTIONS 📓 CHANGELOG FORMATS 📝 NOTES 🌍 ENVIRONMENT 📁 FILES 📚 SEE ALSO