dpkg-parsechangelog

Section: dpkg utilities (1)
Updated: 2009-05-19

NAME

dpkg-parsechangelog - parse Debian changelog files

SYNOPSIS

dpkg-parsechangelog [options]

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

-lchangelogfile: Specifies the change log file to read information from. The default is debian/changelog.
-Fchangelogformat: 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.
-Llibdir: Specify an additional directory to search for parser scripts. This directory is searched before the default directories which are currently /usr/local/lib/dpkg/parsechangelog and /usr/lib/dpkg/parsechangelog.
-h, --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. They need to be supported by the parser script in question. See also CAVEATS.

--format outputformat

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 latest entry, except otherwise stated:

Source: <pkg name>
Version: <version>
Distribution: <target distribution>
Urgency: <urgency>: The highest urgency of all included entries is used.
Maintainer: <author>
Date: <date>
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.

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.

--since version, -sversion, -vversion

include all changes later than version.

--until version, -uversion

include all changes earlier than version.

--from version, -fversion

include all changes equal or later than version.

--to version, -tversion

include all changes up to or equal than version.

--count number, -cnumber, -nnumber

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

--offset number, -onumber

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

--all

include all changes. Note: other options have no effect when this is in use.

CAVEATS

All Parser Options except for -v are only supported in dpkg, version 1.14.16 and later. Third party parsers for changelog formats other than debian might not support all options.

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.

AUTHORS

This is free software; see the GNU General Public Licence version 2 or later for copying conditions. There is NO WARRANTY.

Index

Parser Options

CAVEATS

FILES

AUTHORS

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 07:35:55 GMT, March 26, 2013