# dpkg manual page - deb-old(5)
#
# Copyright © 1995 Raul Miller
# Copyright © 1995-1996 Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
# Copyright © 2000 Wichert Akkerman <wakkerma@debian.org>
#
# This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

=encoding utf8

=head1 NAME

deb-old - old style Debian binary package format

=head1 SYNOPSIS

I<filename>B<.deb>

=head1 DESCRIPTION

The
B<.deb>
format is the Debian binary package file format.
This manual page
describes the
B<old>
format, used before Debian 0.93.
Please see
L<deb(5)>
for details of the new format.

=head1 FORMAT

The file is two lines of format information as ASCII text, followed by
two concatenated gzipped ustar files.

The first line is the format version number padded to 8 digits, and is
B<0.939000>
for all old-format archives.

The second line is a decimal string (without leading zeroes) giving
the length of the first gzipped tarfile.

Each of these lines is terminated with a single newline character.

The first tarfile contains the package metadata, as a series of
ordinary files.
The file
B<control>
must be present, as it contains the package control information.

In some very old archives, the files in the control tarfile may
optionally be in a
B<DEBIAN>
subdirectory.
In that case, the
B<DEBIAN>
subdirectory will be in the control tarfile too, and the control
tarfile will have only files in that directory.
Optionally the
control tarfile may contain an entry for
‘B<.>’,
that is, the current directory.

The second gzipped tarfile is the filesystem archive, containing
pathnames relative to the root directory of the system to be installed
on.
The pathnames do not have leading slashes.

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<deb(5)>,
L<deb-control(5)>,
L<dpkg-deb(1)>.
