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<h4 class="subsection" id="The-DESCRIPTION-File-1"><span>37.4.1 The DESCRIPTION File<a class="copiable-link" href="#The-DESCRIPTION-File-1"> ¶</a></span></h4>
<p>The <samp class="file">DESCRIPTION</samp> file contains various information about the
package, such as its name, author, and version. This file has a very
simple format
</p>
<ul class="itemize mark-bullet">
<li>Lines starting with ‘<samp class="samp">#</samp>’ are comments.
</li><li>Lines starting with a blank character are continuations from the
previous line.
</li><li>Everything else is of the form <code class="code">NameOfOption: ValueOfOption</code>.
</li></ul>
<p>The following is a simple example of a <samp class="file">DESCRIPTION</samp> file
</p>
<div class="example">
<div class="group"><pre class="example-preformatted">Name: The name of my package
Version: 1.0.0
Date: 2007-18-04
Author: The name (and possibly email) of the package author.
Maintainer: The name (and possibly email) of the current
package maintainer.
Title: The title of the package
Description: A short description of the package. If this
description gets too long for one line it can continue
on the next by adding a space to the beginning of the
following lines.
License: GPLv3+
</pre></div></div>
<p>The package manager currently recognizes the following keywords
</p>
<dl class="table">
<dt><code class="code">Name</code></dt>
<dd><p>Name of the package.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Version</code></dt>
<dd><p>Version of the package. A package version is typically digits separated by
dots but may also contain ‘<samp class="samp">+</samp>’, ‘<samp class="samp">-</samp>’, ‘<samp class="samp">~</samp>’, and alphanumeric
characters (in the "C" locale). For example, <code class="code">"2.1.0+"</code> could indicate
a development version of a package.
Versions are compared using <a class="ref" href="System-Information.html#XREFcompare_005fversions">compare_versions</a>.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Date</code></dt>
<dd><p>Date of last update.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Author</code></dt>
<dd><p>Original author of the package.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Maintainer</code></dt>
<dd><p>Maintainer of the package.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Title</code></dt>
<dd><p>A one line description of the package.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Description</code></dt>
<dd><p>A one paragraph description of the package.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Categories</code></dt>
<dd><p>Optional keyword describing the package (if no <samp class="file">INDEX</samp> file is
given this is mandatory).
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Problems</code></dt>
<dd><p>Optional list of known problems.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Url</code></dt>
<dd><p>Optional URL to the homepage or repository related to the package.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Tracker</code></dt>
<dd><p>Optional URL to the bug tracker related to the package. It is highly
encouraged that maintainers utilize a dedicated tracker for reporting issues
related to the package’s functionality in order to keep Octave’s bug tracker at
Savannah.org less bloated and solely for core Octave bug reports.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">Depends</code></dt>
<dd><p>A list of other Octave packages that this package depends on. This can include
dependencies on particular versions, with the following format:
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example-preformatted">Depends: package (>= 1.0.0)
</pre></div>
<p>Possible operators are <code class="code"><</code>, <code class="code"><=</code>, <code class="code">==</code>, <code class="code">>=</code> or <code class="code">></code>.
If the part of the dependency in <code class="code">()</code> is missing, any version of the
package is acceptable. Multiple dependencies can be defined as a comma
separated list. This can be used to define a range of versions of a particular
package:
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example-preformatted">Depends: package (>= 1.0.0), package (< 1.5.0)
</pre></div>
<p>It is also possible to depend on particular versions of Octave core:
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example-preformatted">Depends: octave (>= 3.8.0)
</pre></div>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">License</code></dt>
<dd><p>An optional short description of the used license (e.g., GPL version 3
or newer). This is optional since the file <samp class="file">COPYING</samp> is mandatory.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">SystemRequirements</code></dt>
<dd><p>These are the external install dependencies of the package and are not
checked by the package manager. This is here as a hint to the
distribution packager. They follow the same conventions as the
<code class="code">Depends</code> keyword.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code class="code">BuildRequires</code></dt>
<dd><p>These are the external build dependencies of the package and are not checked by
the package manager. This is here as a hint to the distribution packager.
They follow the same conventions as the <code class="code">Depends</code> keyword. Note that in
general, packaging systems such as <code class="code">rpm</code> or <code class="code">deb</code> autoprobe the
install dependencies from the build dependencies, and therefore a
<code class="code">BuildRequires</code> dependency usually removes the need for a
<code class="code">SystemRequirements</code> dependency.
</p>
</dd>
</dl>
<p>The developer is free to add additional arguments to the
<samp class="file">DESCRIPTION</samp> file for their own purposes. One further detail to
aid the packager is that the <code class="code">SystemRequirements</code> and
<code class="code">BuildRequires</code> keywords can have a distribution dependent section,
and the automatic build process will use these. An example of the
format of this is
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example-preformatted">BuildRequires: libtermcap-devel [Mandriva] libtermcap2-devel
</pre></div>
<p>where the first package name will be used as a default and if the
RPMs are built on a Mandriva distribution, then the second package
name will be used instead.
</p>
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