Chapter 1 - About this manual

1.1 Scope

This manual describes the policy requirements for the Ubuntu distribution. This includes the structure and contents of the Ubuntu archive and several design issues of the operating system, as well as technical requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in the distribution.

This manual also describes Ubuntu policy as it relates to creating Ubuntu packages. It is not a tutorial on how to build packages, nor is it exhaustive where it comes to describing the behavior of the packaging system. Instead, this manual attempts to define the interface to the package management system that the developers have to be conversant with. [1]

The footnotes present in this manual are merely informative, and are not part of Ubuntu policy itself.

The appendices to this manual are not necessarily normative, either. Please see Appendix A for more information.

In the normative part of this manual, the words must, should and may, and the adjectives required, recommended and optional, are used to distinguish the significance of the various guidelines in this policy document. Packages that do not conform to the guidelines denoted by must (or required) will generally not be considered acceptable for the Ubuntu distribution. Non-conformance with guidelines denoted by should (or recommended) will generally be considered a bug, but will not necessarily render a package unsuitable for distribution. Guidelines denoted by may (or optional) are truly optional and adherence is left to the maintainer’s discretion.

These classifications are roughly equivalent to the bug severities serious (for must or required directive violations), minor, normal or important (for should or recommended directive violations) and wishlist (for optional items). [2]

Much of the information presented in this manual will be useful even when building a package which is to be distributed in some other way or is intended for local use only.

The Ubuntu distribution differs from its parent Debian distribution in a number of significant ways. In this document, these are marked with the tag Ubuntu:.

1.2 New versions of this document

Historically, this manual has been distributed via the Ubuntu package ubuntu-policy (packages.ubuntu.com http://packages.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-policy). Now, the policy is hosted on the Ubuntu Project Docs under the Ubuntu Policy Manual.

1.3 Authors and Maintainers

Originally called “Debian GNU/Linux Policy Manual”, this manual was initially written in 1996 by Ian Jackson. It was revised on November 27th, 1996 by David A. Morris. Christian Schwarz added new sections on March 15th, 1997, and reworked/restructured it in April-July 1997. Christoph Lameter contributed the “Web Standard”. Julian Gilbey largely restructured it in 2001.

The Ubuntu branch of this manual is maintained by the ubuntu-devel mailing list. In 2026 Simon Johnsson reduced the branch to the differences between Debian and Ubuntu, and moved it to the Ubuntu Project Docs.

Since September 1998, the responsibility for the contents of the Debian version of this document lies on the debian-policy mailing list. Proposals are discussed there and inserted into policy after a certain consensus is established.

1.5 Definitions

(Shared with Debian, see: Debian Policy Manual, Section 1.5)

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