dpkg technical manual

Version 2.6.1


Abstract

This document describes the minimum necessary workings for the APT dselect replacement. It gives an overall specification of what its external interface must look like for compatibility, and also gives details of some internal quirks.


Table of Contents

1. Quick summary of dpkg's external interface
1.1. Control files
1.2. The dpkg status area
1.3. The dpkg library files
1.4. The "dpkg" command-line utility
2. dpkg-deb and .deb file internals
2.1. The .deb archive format
2.2. The dpkg-deb command-line
3. dpkg internals
3.1. Updates
3.2. What happens when dpkg reads the database
3.3. How dpkg compares version numbers