dpkg-parsechangelog(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CHANGELOG FORMATS | NOTES | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

dpkg-parsechangelog(1)         dpkg suite         dpkg-parsechangelog(1)

NAME         top

       dpkg-parsechangelog - parse Debian changelog files

SYNOPSIS         top

       dpkg-parsechangelog [option...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       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         top

       -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, for example 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
           stanza 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
               The source package name.

           Version: version
               The source version number.  Note: For binary-only
               releases there might be no corresponding source release.

           Distribution: target-distribution
               A space-separated list of one or more distribution names
               where this version should be installed when it is
               uploaded.

           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
               The name and email address of the person who prepared
               these changes, they are not necessarily those of the
               uploader or the usual package maintainer.

           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, but take into
               account it might not be possible to map it back to the
               exact value in this field.

           Timestamp: timestamp
               The date of the entry as a timestamp in seconds since the
               epoch (since dpkg 1.18.8).

           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 is intended 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
           stanza 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         top

       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         top

       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         top

       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         top

       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.

BUGS         top

       The Maintainer field has a confusing name matching the field in
       the debian/control file but not its exact semantics, where its
       meaning would be better represented by the Changed-By field name
       used in the .changes file.

SEE ALSO         top

       deb-changelog(5).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the dpkg (Debian Package Manager) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=dpkg⟩.  This
       page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository ⟨git
       clone https://git.dpkg.org/git/dpkg/dpkg.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2023-12-18.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

1.22.0-52-g1af0                2023-08-30         dpkg-parsechangelog(1)

Pages that refer to this page: dpkg-genbuildinfo(1)dpkg-genchanges(1)dpkg-gencontrol(1)dpkg-source(1)deb-changelog(5)deb-src-rules(5)