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What is a Debian package?

April 26, 2017Debian package

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What is a Debian package?

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Packages generally contain all of the files necessary to implement a set of related commands or features. There are two types of Debian packages: • Binary packages, which contain executables, configuration files, man/info pages, copyright information, and other documentation. These packages are distributed in a Debian-specific archive format (see What is the format of a Debian binary package?, Section 7.2); they are usually distinguished by having a ‘.deb’ file extension. Binary packages can be unpacked using the Debian utility dpkg (possibly via a frontend like aptitude); details are given in its manual page. • Source packages, which consist of a .dsc file describing the source package (including the names of the following files), a .orig.tar.gz file that contains the original unmodified source in gzip-compressed tar format and usually a .diff.gz file that contains the Debian-specific changes to the original source. The utility dpkg-source packs and unpacks Debian source archives; det