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debhelper(7) Debhelper debhelper(7)
debhelper-compat-upgrade-checklist - Upgrade checklist for
supported debhelper compat levels
This document is an upgrade checklist of all the supported
debhelper compat levels. It also lists all the supported debhelper
compat levels.
The dh_assistant compat-upgrade-checklist command can provide a
package specific upgrade checklist from compat 7 and up (requires
debhelper/13.25 or later). Its main limitation is accuracy of its
heuristics. Please review the documentation of dh_assistant(1) for
details.
Information about how to declare the compat level is in
"COMPATIBILITY LEVELS" in debhelper(7).
If you are upgrading from a (now) obsolete compat level, then
please refer to debhelper-obsolete-compat(7).
Upgrade checklist for supported compatibility levels
These are the available compatibility levels:
v15 This compatibility level is still open for development; use
with caution.
Changes from v14 are:
- The single-binary add-on for dh is no longer
implicitly activated by source packages that have a
single Package stanza in debian/control. If the
package needs the short-cuts for single-binary
packages, it must explicitly activate the
single-binary add-in.
This can be done via a Build-Depends on
dh-sequence-single-binary.
Any --without single-binary passed to dh to avoid the
warning in compat 14 can now be removed to simplify
debian/rules without triggering the warning.
- It is now an error to use package-less versions of
debhelper configuration files when there are 2 or more
binary packages listed in debian/control in most
cases. Legacy files should be renamed to
debian/package.foo (from debian/foo) where package is
the first binary package listed in debian/control.
The primary exception to this change are files such as
debian/changelog, debian/NEWS, and debian/copyright,
where the same file is used for all packages by
default. These cases will remain unchanged.
- It is now an error to use a packaging file without the
package prefix for --name even if the source package
only produces one binary package. As example, if you
had a debian/bar.service with the following snippet in
debian/rules:
override_dh_installsystemd:
dh_installsystemd -p foo --name bar
Then you need to rename debian/bar.service to
debian/foo.bar.service.
v14 This compatibility level is still open for development; use
with caution.
Changes from v13 are:
- The dh_installmodules and dh_installpam tools will now
install their configuration files under
/usr/lib/modprobe.d/package and /usr/lib/pam.d/package
instead of their respective directory under /etc.
Please consider using the "rm_conffile" feature from
dh_installdeb(1) to ensure the proper removal of
previous modprobe and PAM files.
- Packages using the dh sequencer should be aware the
following changes:
- The order and placement has changed for
dh_strip_nondeterminism, dh_compress, and
dh_fixperm. Previously, these three commands were
run in the listed order between dh_installxfonts
and dh_missing.
Their new placement is after dh_missing (arch:all)
or dh_shlibdeps (arch:any) and before
dh_installdeb. Additionally, their new order is
dh_fixperms, dh_strip_nondeterminism, and then
dh_compress.
This change may require updates to third-party
add-ons that use either of these three commands as
anchor or to hook targets for any of these
commands that made assumptions about the command
order.
Additionally, dh_strip_nondeterminism and
dh_compress plus any commands added by third-party
add-ons using these as anchors will no longer be
able to rely on the mode/ownership normalization
by dh_fixperms, which may expose bugs in the form
of incorrect mode or ownership in the resulting
binary package.
Please file any such bugs against the relevant
tool. Feel free to include the debhelper
maintainers in CC.
- The tool dh_installsysusers is now included in the
default sequence. This helper tool will process
systemd sysusers files.
- The dh_installalternatives tool will now be run
after dh_link rather than after
dh_installinitramfs in the default dh sequence.
- The dh_dwz command has been removed from the
default sequence. If it is still desired, add
dh-sequence-dwz to Build-Depends-Arch or run it in
execute_before_dh_strip-arch with -a to get the
closest emulation of the previous behavior.
Note: The dh_dwz command will cause a lot of
differences in the generated debug symbols. If
you use diffoscope as part of your compat upgrade
checks, you may want to temporarily use dh_dwz to
keep the delta reviewable while upgrading and then
remove dh_dwz afterwards.
- Use of the dh_gconf command in override and hook
targets now causes an error. The dh_gconf command
has been a no-op for years and was removed in
debhelper 13.4.
- A new tool called dh_computeautosubstvars has been
added and is now run immediately before
dh_gencontrol. If you inject commands before
dh_gencontrol (either via hook targets or
third-party sequence add-on), consider moving them
to after dh_installdeb instead as the new tool
generally assumes no more changes will occur
between it is called and dh_gencontrol is called.
Notable exception to this assumption if you have
to tweak substvars per
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/03/msg00030.html>.
- This item only applies to source packages that
have exactly one Package stanza in debian/control.
The dh_auto_install command now unconditionally
uses --destdir=debian/tmp by default. The
special-case for source packages building a single
binary package is now moved to single-binary dh
addon. Note, this add-on is activated by default
in compat 14 but not in compat 15 (see next bullet
item).
- This item only applies to source packages that
have exactly one Package stanza in debian/control.
The dh sequencer will warn if the single-binary
addon is implicitly activated to warn maintainers
of the pending compat 15 change in
dh_auto_install. The implicit activation is a
transitional feature to reduce the changes of
risks with this change. In compat 15, the
implicit activation will no longer trigger.
Maintainers are urged to either explicitly
activate the single-binary addon to preserve the
existing behaviour (e.g., by adding
dh-sequence-single-binary to Build-Depends), or
explicitly passing --destdir to dh_auto_install if
used and then passing --without single-binary to
dh (the latter to silence the warning).
The rationale for this change is to avoid
"surprises" when adding a second binary package
later. Previously, debhelper would silently
change behaviour often resulting in empty binary
packages being uploaded to the archive by mistake.
With the new behaviour, the single-binary addon
will detect the mismatch and warn the maintainer
of what is about to happen.
- The dh_installsystemduser tool will default to
enabling systemd user units, start them on
installation, restart them on upgrades and stop them
on uninstalling the package.
- The dh_gencontrol tool now automatically applies
relationship substvars to relevant fields. That means
that many substvars such as ${misc:Depends} and
${shlibs:Depends} no longer need to be explicitly
mentioned in debian/control. This applies to any
substvar named after a field that the installed
version of dpkg considers a relation or
dependency-like field. At the time of writing, the
list consists of:
- Pre-Depends
- Depends
- Recommends
- Suggests
- Enhances
- Conflicts
- Breaks
- Replaces
- Provides
- Built-Using
- Static-Built-Using
This means that Depends: foo, ${misc:Depends} in
debian/control can now be reduced to Depends: foo and
Depends: ${misc:Depends}, ${shlibs:Depends} can be
removed entirely as examples of how the feature works.
Note that other substvars such as ${binary:Version}
are unaffected by this change and should still be used
explicitly as necessary. Additionally, for Essential:
yes packages that manually promoted ${shlibs:Depends}
into Pre-Depends field, dh_shlibdeps will handle this
automatically as well (see the next compat item).
See
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/02/msg00230.html>
for the details of this proposal. The summary in
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/03/msg00030.html>
also covers when the substvars need tweaking. The
most common case involves using the -d option from
dpkg-shlibdeps possibly via dh_shlibdeps.
Note: This change will cause false-positives from an
unfixed lintian(1). Please check
<https://bugs.debian.org/1067653> for lintian(1)
support for this change.
Finally, debhelper also applies this feature the
substvars for the following fields due to
implementation details:
- Commands
See #638517 <https://bugs.debian.org/638517> for
what the field is used for.
- The dh_shlibdeps tool now defaults to using
${shlibs:Pre-Depends} for packages that are Essential:
yes.
Note due to the dh_gencontrol change above, any
package using dh_gencontrol will not have to do
anything for this migration.
- When running dh_auto_install, debhelper provided build
systems will now ensure all paths in the destdir have
minimal user permissions (chmod -R u+rwX) to avoid
weird permission denied errors during builds.
Third-party provided debhelper build systems are
recommended to support this as well. This can be done
by running
$this->ensure_minimal_permissions($destdir) if not compat(13);
in the debhelper Buildsystem code from their sub
install implementation after the upstream code has
been run.
If you are not using dh_auto_install and you run into
weird permission denied errors, you can often solve
this by running chmod -R u+rwX DIRECTORY after running
the install target from the upstream build system.
Please take care to check if your package has any
special cases for permissions where files or
directories for some reason must not have the "user
write bit" set. Known cases are *.ali files and
/etc/sudoers.d, which dh_fixperms will fix up by
default.
The problem with uncommon permissions have always been
present in theory. However, it has become considerable
more visible with dh_fixperms being run later in the
sequence as of compat 14 and with the move to remove
fakeroot by default (which papered over some of these
issues). This change is aimed at mitigating the
problem.
- The debhelper configuration files are subject to the
following changes:
- It now triggers a warning to use package-less
versions of debhelper configuration files when
there are 2 or more binary packages listed in
debian/control in most cases. Legacy files should
be renamed to debian/package.foo (from debian/foo)
where package is the first binary package listed
in debian/control.
The primary exception to this change are files
such as debian/changelog, debian/NEWS, and
debian/copyright, where the same file is used for
all packages by default. These cases will remain
unchanged. The debhelper tool using the files
will trigger warnings on usage.
In compat 15 (or later), this is changed to an
error.
- It now triggers a warning to use a packaging file
without the package prefix for --name even if the
source package only produces one binary package.
As example, if you had a debian/bar.service with
the following snippet in debian/rules:
override_dh_installsystemd:
dh_installsystemd -p foo --name bar
Then you need to rename debian/bar.service to
debian/foo.bar.service.
In compat 15 (or later), this is changed to an
error.
- The default look up rules for Dh_Lib based tools
now assume that configuration files are no longer
named (--name) nor support architecture
restrictions by default. If you work with a
third-party debhelper-like tool and need support
for either of these features, please file a bug
against the tool asking it to declare its
configuration file with the relevant options in
its pkgfile call.
Note that debhelper itself tweaked its rules for
most of its tools as well based on analysis of
usage via codesearch.debian.org. Should you be
relying on a feature like architecture
restrictions for a given config file that is no
longer supported, please file a feature request
for the use-case and it might be restored.
- Packages using the cmake build system should be aware
of the following changes:
- The cmake buildsystem now passes
-DCMAKE_BUILD_RPATH_USE_ORIGIN=ON to cmake(1) to
avoid some reproducibility issues.
- The cmake build system now sets the ASMFLAGS
environment variable when it is unset and ASFLAGS
is present. The former name (ASMFLAGS) is the name
cmake expects, while the latter (ASFLAGS) is the
name that dpkg-buildpackage(1) uses.
- The cmake build systems now use cmake --install
instead of make install in the dh_auto_install(1)
call. Any override of dh_auto_install that passes
extra parameters to the upstream build system
should be reviewed.
- Packages using the meson build system should be aware
of the following changes:
- The meson build system now passes
--auto-features=enabled to meson.
- The meson+ninja build system now use meson install
instead of ninja install in the dh_auto_install(1)
call. Any override of dh_auto_install that passes
extra parameters to the upstream build system
should be reviewed.
- The debian/compat file is no longer accepted as a
source for specifying the debhelper compat level. Put
the compat level in the X-DH-Compat field of the
Source stanza of debian/control.
Note to avoid breaking packages that already migrated
to compat 14 immediately, while it was experimental
this change is first enforced when compat 14 becomes
stable.
- The tool dh_installtmpfiles now runs with --remove on
package removal, and --purge on package purge. systemd
v256 is required for the latter.
- The dh_lintian tool no longer accepts architecture
specific overrides files for packages with Multi-Arch:
same in debian/control, since these would not be
co-installable. Instances affected by this error
should migrate to lintian(1) architecture specific
overrides.
v13 This is the recommended mode of operation.
Changes from v12 are:
- The meson+ninja build system now uses meson test
instead of ninja test when running the test suite.
Any override of dh_auto_test that passes extra
parameters to upstream test runner should be reviewed
as meson test is not command line compatible with
ninja test.
- All debhelper like tools based on the official
debhelper library (including dh and the official dh_*
tools) no longer accepts abbreviated command
parameters. At the same time, dh now optimizes out
calls to redundant dh_* helpers even when passed long
command line options.
- The ELF related debhelper tools (dh_dwz, dh_strip,
dh_makeshlibs, dh_shlibdeps) are now only run for arch
dependent packages by default (i.e. they are excluded
from *-indep targets and are passed -a by default). If
you need them for *-indep targets, you can add an
explicit Build-Depends on dh-sequence-elf-tools.
- The third-party gradle build system (from
gradle-debian-helper package) now runs the
upstream-provided test suite automatically. To
suppress such behavior, override dh_auto_test.
- The dh_installman tool now aborts if it sees
conflicting definitions of a manpage. This typically
happens if the upstream build system is installing a
compressed version and the package lists an
uncompressed version of the manpage in
debian/package.manpages. Often the easiest fix is to
remove the manpage from debian/package.manpages
(assuming both versions are identical).
- The dh_auto_* helpers now reset the environment
variable HOME and the common XDG_* variables. Please
see description of the environment variables in
"ENVIRONMENT" in debhelper(1) for how this is handled.
This feature changed between debhelper 13 and
debhelper 13.2.
- The dh command will now error if an override or hook
target for an obsolete command are present in
debian/rules (e.g. override_dh_systemd_enable:).
- The dh_missing command will now default to
--fail-missing. This can be reverted to a non-fatal
warning by explicitly passing --list-missing like it
was in compat 12.
If you do not want the warning either, please omit the
call to dh_missing. If you use the dh command
sequencer, then you can do this by inserting an empty
override target in the debian/rules file of the
relevant package. As an example:
# Disable dh_missing
override_dh_missing:
- The dh command sequencer now runs dh_installtmpfiles
in the default sequence. The dh_installtmpfiles takes
over handling of tmpfiles.d configuration files.
Related functionality in dh_installsystemd is now
disabled.
Note that dh_installtmpfiles responds to
debian/package.tmpfiles where dh_installsystemd used a
name without the trailing "s".
- Many dh_* tools now support limited variable expansion
via the ${foo} syntax. In many cases, this can be
used to reference paths that contain either spaces or
dpkg-architecture(1) values. While this can reduce
the need for dh-exec(1) in some cases, it is not a
replacement dh-exec(1) in general. If you need
filtering, renaming, etc., the package will still need
dh-exec(1).
Please see "Substitutions in debhelper config files"
for syntax and available substitution variables. To
dh_* tool writers, substitution expansion occurs as a
part of the filearray and filedoublearray functions.
- The dh command sequencer will now skip all hook and
override targets for dh_auto_test, dh_dwz and dh_strip
when DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS lists the relevant nocheck /
nostrip options.
Any package relying on these targets to always be run
should instead move relevant logic out of those
targets. E.g. non-test related packaging code from
override_dh_auto_test would have to be moved to
execute_after_dh_auto_build or
execute_before_dh_auto_install.
- The cmake buildsystem now passes
-DCMAKE_SKIP_INSTALL_ALL_DEPENDENCY=ON to cmake(1) to
speed up automatic installation process. If for some
reason you need previous behavior, override the flag:
dh_auto_configure -- -DCMAKE_SKIP_INSTALL_ALL_DEPENDENCY=OFF ...
v12 Changes from v11 are:
- The dh_makeshlibs tool now generates shlibs files with
versioned dependency by default. This means that
-VUpstream-Version (a.k.a. -V) is now the default.
If an unversioned dependency in the shlibs file is
wanted, this can be obtained by passing -VNone
instead. However, please see dh_makeshlibs(1) for the
caveat of unversioned dependencies.
- The -s (--same-arch) option is removed. Please use -a
(--arch) instead.
- Invoking dh_clean -k now causes an error instead of a
deprecation warning.
- The --no-restart-on-upgrade option in dh_installinit
has been removed. Please use the new name
--no-stop-on-upgrade
- There was a bug in the doit (and similar) functions
from Debian::Debhelper::Dh_Lib that made them spawn a
shell in one particular circumstance. This bug is now
removed and will cause helpers that rely on the bug to
fail with a "command not found"-error.
- The --list-missing and --fail-missing in dh_install
has been removed. Please use dh_missing and its
corresponding options, which can also see the files
installed by other helpers.
- The dh_installinit helper no longer installs
configuration for the upstart init system. Instead,
it will abort the build if it finds an old upstart
configuration file. The error is there to remind the
package maintainer to ensure the proper removal of the
conffiles shipped in previous versions of the package
(if any).
- The dh_installdeb tool will do basic validation of
some dpkg-maintscript-helper(1) commands and will
error out if the commands appear to be invalid.
- The dh_missing tool will now default to
--list-missing.
- The dh_makeshlibs tool will now only pass libraries to
dpkg-gensymbols(1) if the ELF binary has a SONAME
(containing ".so").
- The dh_compress tool no longer compresses examples
(i.e. anything installed in
</usr/share/doc/package/examples>.)
- The standard sequence in dh now includes dh_dwz and
dh_installinitramfs by default. This makes the dwz
and installinitramfs sequences obsolete and they will
now fail with an error. If you want to skip these
commands, then please insert an empty override target
for them in debian/rules (e.g. override_dh_dwz:)
- The build systems meson and autoconf no longer
explicitly set the --libexecdir variable and thus
relies on the build system default - which should be
/usr/libexec (per FHS 3.0, adopted in Debian Policy
4.1.5).
If a particular upstream package does not use the
correct default, the parameter can often be passed
manually via dh_auto_configure(1). E.g. via the
following example:
override_dh_auto_configure:
dh_auto_configure -- --libexecdir=/usr/libexec
Note the -- before the --libexecdir parameter.
- Retroactively removed in debhelper/13.5:
The dh_installdeb tool would no longer install the
maintainer provided conffiles file as it was deemed
unnecessary. However, the remove-on-upgrade from
dpkg/1.20 made the file relevant again and
dh_installdeb now installs it again in compat levels
12+.
- The dh_installsystemd tool no longer relies on
dh_installinit for handling systemd services that have
a sysvinit alternative. Both tools must now be used
in such a case to ensure the service is properly
started under both sysvinit and systemd.
If you have an override for dh_installinit (e.g. to
call it with --no-start) then you will probably need
one for dh_installsystemd as well now.
This change makes dh_installinit inject a
misc:Pre-Depends for init-system-helpers (>= 1.54~).
Please ensure that the package lists
${misc:Pre-Depends} in its Pre-Depends field before
upgrading to compat 12.
- The third-party dh_golang tool (from dh-golang
package) now defaults on honoring DH_GOLANG_EXCLUDES
variable for source installation in -dev packages and
not only during the building process. Please set
DH_GOLANG_EXCLUDES_ALL to false to revert to the
previous behaviour. See
Debian::Debhelper::Buildsystem::golang(3pm) for
details and examples.
- dh_installsystemduser is now included in the dh
standard sequence by default.
- The python-distutils buildsystem is now removed.
Please use the third-party build system pybuild
instead.
v11 This mode is discouraged.
The compat 11 is discouraged for new packages as it suffers
from feature interaction between dh_installinit and
dh_installsystemd causing services to not run correctly in
some cases. Please consider using compatibility mode 10 or 12
instead. More details about the issue are available in
Debian#887904 and
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2019/04/msg01442.html>.
Changes from v10 are:
- dh_installinit no longer installs service or tmpfile
files, nor generates maintainer scripts for those
files. Please use the new dh_installsystemd helper.
- The dh_systemd_enable and dh_systemd_start helpers
have been replaced by the new dh_installsystemd
helper. For the same reason, the systemd sequence for
dh has also been removed. If you need to disable the
dh_installsystemd helper tool, please use an empty
override target.
Please note that the dh_installsystemd tool has a
slightly different behaviour in some cases (e.g. when
using the --name parameter).
- dh_installdirs no longer creates debian/package
directories unless explicitly requested (or it has to
create a subdirectory in it).
The vast majority of all packages will be unaffected
by this change.
- The makefile buildsystem now passes INSTALL="install
--strip-program=true" to make(1). Derivative
buildsystems (e.g. configure or cmake) are unaffected
by this change.
- The autoconf buildsystem now passes --runstatedir=/run
to ./configure.
- The cmake buildsystem now passes
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_RUNSTATEDIR=/run to cmake(1).
- dh_installman will now prefer detecting the language
from the path name rather than the extension.
- dh_auto_install will now only create the destination
directory it needs. Previously, it would create the
package build directory for all packages. This will
not affect packages that only build with debhelper
commands, but it may expose bugs in commands not
included in debhelper.
- The helpers dh_installdocs, dh_installexamples,
dh_installinfo, and dh_installman now error out if
their config has a pattern that does not match
anything or reference a path that does not exist.
Known exceptions include building with the nodoc
profile, where the above tools will silently permit
failed matches where the patterns are used to specify
documentation.
- The helpers dh_installdocs, dh_installexamples,
dh_installinfo, and dh_installman now accept the
parameter --sourcedir with same meaning as dh_install.
Furthermore, they now also fall back to debian/tmp
like dh_install.
Migration note: A bug in debhelper 11 up to 11.1.5
made dh_installinfo incorrectly ignore --sourcedir.
- The perl-makemaker and perl-build build systems no
longer pass -I. to perl. Packages that rely on this
behavior can often use the PERL5LIB environment
variable as a substitute. E.g. by adding export
PERL5LIB=. in their debian/rules file (or similar).
- The PERL_USE_UNSAFE_INC environment variable is no
longer set by dh or any of the dh_auto_* tools. It
was added as a temporary work around to avoid a lot of
packages failing to build at the same time.
Note this item will eventually become obsolete as
upstream intends to drop support for the
PERL_USE_UNSAFE_INC environment variable. When perl
drops support for it, then this variable will be
removed retroactively from existing compat levels as
well.
- The dh_makeshlibs helper will now exit with an error
if objdump returns a non-zero exit from analysing a
given file.
- The dh_installdocs and dh_installexamples tools may
now install most of the documentation in a different
path to comply with the recommendation from Debian
policy §12.3 (since version 3.9.7).
Note that if a given source package only contains a
single binary package in debian/control or none of the
packages are -doc packages, then this change is not
relevant for that source package and you can skip to
the next change.
By default, these tools will now attempt to determine
a "main package for the documentation" (called a
doc-main-package from here on) for every -doc package.
If they find such a doc-main-package, they will now
install the documentation into the path
/usr/share/doc/doc-main-package in the given doc
package. I.e. the path can change but the
documentation is still shipped in the -doc package.
The --doc-main-package option can be used when the
auto-detection is insufficient or to reset the path to
its previous value if there is a reason to diverge
from Debian policy recommendation.
Some documentation will not be affected by this
change. These exceptions include the copyright file,
changelog files, README.Debian, etc. These files will
still be installed in the path /usr/share/doc/package.
- The dh_strip and dh_shlibdeps tools no longer uses
filename patterns to determine which files to process.
Instead, they open the file and look for an ELF header
to determine if a given file is an shared object or an
ELF executable.
This change may cause the tools to process more files
than previously.
v10 Changes from v9 are:
- dh_installinit will no longer installs a file named
debian/package as an init script.
- dh_installdocs will error out if it detects links
created with --link-doc between packages of
architecture "all" and non-"all" as it breaks binNMUs.
- dh_installdeb no longer installs a maintainer-provided
debian/package.shlibs file. This is now done by
dh_makeshlibs instead.
- dh_installwm refuses to create a broken package if no
man page can be found (required to register for the
x-window-manager alternative).
- Debhelper will default to --parallel for all
buildsystems that support parallel building. This can
be disabled by using either --no-parallel or passing
--max-parallel with a value of 1.
- The dh command will not accept any of the deprecated
"manual sequence control" parameters (--before,
--after, etc.). Please use override targets instead.
Retroactively applied to earlier compat levels: dh no
longer accepts any of these since debhelper/12.4.
- The dh command will no longer use log files to track
which commands have been run. The dh command still
keeps track of whether it already ran the "build"
sequence and skip it if it did.
The main effects of this are:
- With this, it is now easier to debug the install
or/and binary sequences because they can now
trivially be re-run (without having to do a full
"clean and rebuild" cycle)
- The main caveat is that dh_* now only keeps track
of what happened in a single override target.
When all the calls to a given dh_cmd command
happens in the same override target everything
will work as before.
Example of where it can go wrong:
override_dh_foo:
dh_foo -pmy-pkg
override_dh_bar:
dh_bar
dh_foo --remaining
In this case, the call to dh_foo --remaining will
also include my-pkg, since dh_foo -pmy-pkg was run
in a separate override target. This issue is not
limited to --remaining, but also includes -a, -i,
etc.
- The dh_installdeb command now shell-escapes the lines
in the maintscript config file. This was the original
intent but it did not work properly and packages have
begun to rely on the incomplete shell escaping (e.g.
quoting file names).
- The dh_installinit command now defaults to
--restart-after-upgrade. For packages needing the
previous behaviour, please use
--no-restart-after-upgrade.
- The autoreconf sequence is now enabled by default.
Please pass --without autoreconf to dh if this is not
desirable for a given package
- The systemd sequence is now enabled by default.
Please pass --without systemd to dh if this is not
desirable for a given package.
- Retroactively removed: dh no longer creates the
package build directory when skipping running
debhelper commands. This will not affect packages that
only build with debhelper commands, but it may expose
bugs in commands not included in debhelper.
This compatibility feature had a bug since its
inception in debhelper/9.20130516 that made it fail to
apply in compat 9 and earlier. As there has been no
reports of issues caused by this bug in those ~5
years, this item have been removed rather than fixed.
v9 Changes from v8 are:
- Multiarch support. In particular, dh_auto_configure
passes multiarch directories to autoconf in --libdir
and --libexecdir.
- dh is aware of the usual dependencies between targets
in debian/rules. So, "dh binary" will run any build,
build-arch, build-indep, install, etc targets that
exist in the rules file. There's no need to define an
explicit binary target with explicit dependencies on
the other targets.
- dh_strip compresses debugging symbol files to reduce
the installed size of -dbg packages.
- dh_auto_configure does not include the source package
name in --libexecdir when using autoconf.
- dh does not default to enabling --with=python-support
(Obsolete: As the dh_pysupport tool was removed from
Debian stretch. Since debhelper/10.3, dh no longer
enables this sequence add-on regardless of compat
level)
- All of the dh_auto_* debhelper programs and dh set
environment variables listed by dpkg-buildflags,
unless they are already set.
- dh_auto_configure passes dpkg-buildflags CFLAGS,
CPPFLAGS, and LDFLAGS to perl Makefile.PL and Build.PL
- dh_strip puts separated debug symbols in a location
based on their build-id.
- Executable debhelper config files are run and their
output used as the configuration.
This mode is deprecated.
v8 Changes from v7 are:
- Commands will fail rather than warning when they are
passed unknown options.
- dh_makeshlibs will run dpkg-gensymbols on all shared
libraries that it generates shlibs files for. So -X
can be used to exclude libraries. Also, libraries in
unusual locations that dpkg-gensymbols would not have
processed before will be passed to it, a behavior
change that can cause some packages to fail to build.
- dh requires the sequence to run be specified as the
first parameter, and any switches come after it. Ie,
use "dh $@ --foo", not "dh --foo $@".
- dh_auto_* prefer to use Perl's Module::Build in
preference to Makefile.PL.
This mode is deprecated.
v7 This mode is deprecated.
This is the lowest supported compatibility level.
If you are upgrading from an earlier compatibility level,
please review debhelper-obsolete-compat(7).
debhelper-obsolete-compat(7)
Upgrading from a (now) obsolete compatibility level? This
document covers the upgrade checklist up to the earliest
supported level.
debhelper(7)
General information about the debhelper framework. This
document also covers how to declare your chosen debhelper
compat level.
Niels Thykier <[email protected]>
Joey Hess
This page is part of the debhelper (helper programs for
debian/rules) project. Information about the project can be found
at [unknown -- if you know, please contact [email protected]] If
you have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
[email protected]. This page was obtained from the project's
upstream Git repository
⟨https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debhelper.git⟩ on 2025-08-11.
(At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
in the repository was 2025-08-10.) 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
[email protected]
13.25~1.gbp3d6378 2025-08-08 debhelper(7)
Pages that refer to this page: debhelper(7)
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