debchange or its alias dch will add a new comment line to
the Debian changelog in the current source tree. This command must be
run from within that tree. If the text of the change is given on the
command line, debchange will run in batch mode and simply add the
text, with line breaks as necessary, at the appropriate place in
debian/changelog (or the changelog specified by options, as
described below). If no text is specified then debchange
will run the editor as determined by sensible-editor for you to
edit the file. (The environment variables VISUAL and
EDITOR are used in this order to determine which editor to use.)
Editors which understand the +n option for starting the editing
on a specified line will use this to move to the correct line of the
file for editing. If the editor is quit without modifying the
temporary file, debchange will exit without touching the
existing changelog. Note that the changelog is assumed to be
encoded with the UTF-8 encoding. If it is not, problems may occur.
Please see the iconv(1) manpage to find out how to convert
changelogs from legacy encodings. Finally, a changelog or NEWS
file can be created from scratch using the --create option
described below.
debchange also supports automatically producing bug-closing
changelog entries, using the --closes option. This will
usually query the BTS, the Debian Bug Tracking System (see
http://bugs.debian.org/) to determine the title of the bug and the
package in which it occurs. This behaviour can be stopped by giving a
--noquery option or by setting the configuration variable
DEBCHANGE_QUERY_BTS to no, as described below. In either
case, the editor (as described above) will always be invoked to give
an opportunity to modify the entries, and the changelog will be
accepted whether or not modifications are made. An extra changelog
entry can be given on the command line in addition to the closes
entries.
At most one of --append, --increment, --edit,
--release, and --newversion may be specified as listed
below. If no options are specified, debchange will use heuristics to
guess whether or not the package has been successfully released, and behave
as if --increment had been specified if the package has been
released, or otherwise as if --append has been specified.
Two different sets of heuristics can be used, as controlled by the
--release-heuristic option or the
DEBCHANGE_RELEASE_HEURISTIC configuration variable. The default
"log" heuristic determines if a package has been released by looking for an
appropriate dupload(1) or dput(1) log file in the parent
directory. A warning will be issued if the log file is found but a
successful upload is not recorded. This may be because the previous upload
was performed with a version of dupload prior to 2.1 or because the
upload failed. The alternate "changelog" heuristic assumes the package has
been released unless its changelog contains "UNRELEASED" in the
distribution field. If this heuristic is enabled then the distribution will
default to "UNRELEASED" in new changelog entries. This can be useful if a
package can be released by different maintainers, or if you do not keep the
upload logs.
If either --increment or --newversion is used, the
name and email for the new version will be determined as follows. If
the environment variable DEBFULLNAME is set, this will be used
for the maintainer full name; if not, then NAME will be checked.
If the environment variable DEBEMAIL is set, this will be used
for the email address. If this variable has the form "name <email>",
then the maintainer name will also be taken from here if neither
DEBFULLNAME nor NAME is set. If this variable is not set,
the same test is performed on the environment variable EMAIL.
Next, if the full name has still not been determined, then use
getpwuid(3) to determine the name from the password file. If
this fails, use the previous changelog entry. For the email address,
if it has not been set from DEBEMAIL or EMAIL, then look
in /etc/mailname, then attempt to build it from the username and
FQDN, otherwise use the email address in the previous changelog entry.
In other words, it's a good idea to set DEBEMAIL and
DEBFULLNAME when using this script.
Support is included for changelogs that record changes by multiple
co-maintainers of a package. If an entry is appended to the current
version's entries, and the maintainer is different from the maintainer who
is listed as having done the previous entries, then lines will be added to
the changelog to tell which maintainers made which changes. Currently only
one of the several such styles of recording this information is supported,
in which the name of the maintainer who made a set of changes appears
on a line before the changes, inside square brackets. This can be
switched on and off using the --[no]multimaint option or the
DEBCHANGE_MULTIMAINT configuration file option; the default is to
enable it. Note that if an entry has already been marked in this way,
then this option will be silently ignored.
If the directory name of the source tree has the form
package-version, then debchange will also attempt to
rename it if the (upstream) version number changes. This can be
prevented by using the --preserve command line or
configuration file option as described below.
If --force-bad-version is used, debchange will not stop if
the new version is less than the current one. This is especially
useful while doing backports.
Directory name checking
In common with several other scripts in the devscripts package,
debchange will climb the directory tree until it finds a
debian/changelog file. As a safeguard against stray files
causing potential problems, it will examine the name of the parent
directory once it finds the debian/changelog file, and check
that the directory name corresponds to the package name. Precisely
how it does this is controlled by two configuration file variables
DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_LEVEL and DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_REGEX, and
their corresponding command-line options --check-dirname-level
and --check-dirname-regex.
DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_LEVEL can take the following values:
0
Never check the directory name.
1
Only check the directory name if we have had to change directory in
our search for debian/changelog. This is the default behaviour.
2
Always check the directory name.
The directory name is checked by testing whether the current directory
name (as determined by pwd(1)) matches the regex given by the
configuration file option DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_REGEX or by the
command line option --check-dirname-regexregex. Here
regex is a Perl regex (see perlre(3perl)), which will be
anchored at the beginning and the end. If regex contains a '/',
then it must match the full directory path. If not, then it must
match the full directory name. If regex contains the string
'PACKAGE', this will be replaced by the source package name, as
determined from the changelog. The default value for the regex is:
'PACKAGE(-.*)?', thus matching directory names such as PACKAGE and
PACKAGE-version.
The default changelog to be edited is debian/changelog; however,
this can be changed using the --changelog or --news
options or the CHANGELOG environment variable, as described below.
OPTIONS
--append, -a
Add a new changelog entry at the end of the current version's entries.
--increment, -i
Increment either the final component of the Debian release number or,
if this is a native Debian package, the version number. This creates
a new section at the beginning of the changelog with appropriate
headers and footers. Also, if this is a new version of a native
Debian package, the directory name is changed to reflect this.
--newversion version, -v version
This specifies the version number (including the Debian release part)
explicitly and behaves as the --increment option in other
respects. It will also change the directory name if the upstream
version number has changed.
--edit, -e
Update the changelog timestamp, and start an editor.
--release, -r
Update the changelog timestamp. If the distribution is set to
"UNRELEASED", change it to unstable (or another distribution as specified
by --distribution).
--create
This will create a new debian/changelog file (or NEWS if
the --news option is used). You must be in the top-level
directory to use this; no directory name checking will be performed.
The package name and version can either be specified using the
--package and --newversion options, determined from
the directory name using the --fromdirname option or entered
manually into the generated changelog file. The maintainer name is
determined from the environment if this is possible, and the
distribution is specified either using the --distribution
option or in the generated changelog file.
--packagepackage
This specifies the package name to be used in the new changelog; this
may only be used in conjunction with the --create option.
--nmu, -n
Increment the Debian release number for a non-maintainer upload by
either appending a ".1" to a non-NMU version number or by incrementing
an NMU version number, and add an NMU changelog comment.
--qa
Increment the Debian release number for a Debian QA Team upload, and
add a QA upload changelog comment.
--security, -s
Increment the Debian release number for a security team upload by
either appending a ".1" to a non-NMU version number or by incrementing
an NMU version number, and add an security update changelog comment.
--bpo
Increment the Debian release number for a upload to etch-backports,
and add a backport upload changelog comment.
--force-bad-version, -b
Force a version number to be less than the current one (e.g., when
backporting).
--fromdirname, -d
This will take the upstream version number from the directory name,
which should be of the form package-version. If the
upstream version number has increased from the most recent changelog
entry, then a new entry will be made with version number
version-1 (or version if the package is Debian native),
with the same epoch as the previous package version. If the upstream
version number is the same, this option will behave in the same way as
-i.
--closes nnnnn,[nnnnn,...]
Add changelog entries to close the specified bug numbers. Also invoke
the editor after adding these entries. Will generate warnings if the
BTS cannot be contacted (and --noquery has not been
specified), or if there are problems with the bug report located.
--[no]query
Should we attempt to query the BTS when generating closes entries?
--preserve, -p
Preserve the source tree directory name if the upstream version number
(or the version number of a Debian native package) changes. See also
the configuration variables section below.
--no-preserve
Do not preserve the source tree directory name (default).
--distribution dist, -D dist
Use the specified distribution in the changelog entry being edited,
instead of using the previous changelog entry's distribution for new
entries or the existing value for existing entries.
--urgency urgency, -u urgency
Use the specified urgency in the changelog entry being edited,
instead of using the default "low" for new entries or the existing
value for existing entries.
--changelog file, -c file
This will edit the changelog file instead of the standard
debian/changelog. This option overrides any CHANGELOG
environment variable setting. Also, no directory traversing or
checking will be performed when this option is used.
--news [newsfile]
This will edit newsfile (by default, debian/NEWS) instead
of the regular changelog. Directory searching will be performed.
Cannot be used together with --changelog.
--[no]multimaint
Should we indicate that parts of a changelog entry have been made by
different maintainers? Default is yes; see the discussion above and
also the DEBCHANGE_MULTIMAINT configuration file option below.
--maintmaint, -m
Do not modify the maintainer details previously listed in the changelog.
This is useful particularly for sponsors wanting to automatically add a
sponsorship message without disrupting the other changelog details.
Note that there may be some interesting interactions if
multi-maintainer mode is in use; you will probably wish to check the
changelog manually before uploading it in such cases.
--check-dirname-levelN
See the above section "Directory name checking" for an explanation of
this option.
--check-dirname-regexregex
See the above section "Directory name checking" for an explanation of
this option.
--no-conf, --noconf
Do not read any configuration files. This can only be used as the
first option given on the command-line.
--release-heuristiclog|changelog
Controls how debchange determines if a package has been released,
when deciding whether to create a new changelog entry or append to an
existing changelog entry.
--help, -h
Display a help message and exit successfully.
--version
Display version and copyright information and exit successfully.
CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
The two configuration files /etc/devscripts.conf and
~/.devscripts are sourced in that order to set configuration
variables. Command line options can be used to override configuration
file settings. Environment variable settings are ignored for this
purpose. The currently recognised variables are:
DEBCHANGE_PRESERVE
If this is set to yes, then it is the same as the
--preserve command line parameter being used.
DEBCHANGE_QUERY_BTS
If this is set to no, then it is the same as the
--noquery command line parameter being used.
See the above section "Directory name checking" for an explanation of
these variables. Note that these are package-wide configuration
variables, and will therefore affect all devscripts scripts
which check their value, as described in their respective manpages and
in devscripts.conf(5).
DEBCHANGE_RELEASE_HEURISTIC
Controls how debchange determines if a package has been released,
when deciding whether to create a new changelog entry or append to an
existing changelog entry. Can be either "log" or "changelog".
DEBCHANGE_MULTIMAINT
If set to "no", debchange will not introduce multiple-maintainer
distinctions when a different maintainer appends an entry to an
existing changelog. See the discussion above. Default is "yes".
DEBCHANGE_MULTIMAINT_MERGE
If set to "yes", when adding changes in multiple-maintainer mode
debchange will check whether previous changes by the current
maintainer exist and add the new changes to the existing block
rather than creating a new block. Default is "no".
DEBCHANGE_TZ
Use this timezone for changelog entries. Default is the user/system
timezone as shown by `date -R`.
ENVIRONMENT
DEBEMAIL, EMAIL, DEBFULLNAME, NAME
See the above description of the use of these environment variables.
CHANGELOG
This variable specifies the changelog to edit in place of
debian/changelog. No directory traversal or checking is
performed when this variable is set. This variable is overridden by
the --changelog command-line setting.
VISUAL, EDITOR
These environment variables (in this order) determine the editor used
by sensible-editor.
The original author was Christoph Lameter <clameter@debian.org>.
Many substantial changes and improvements were made by Julian Gilbey
<jdg@debian.org>.
