dpkg-mergechangelogs(1) — Linux manual page
dpkg-mergechangelogs(1) dpkg suite dpkg-mergechangelogs(1)
NAME
dpkg-mergechangelogs - 3-way merge of debian/changelog files
SYNOPSIS
dpkg-mergechangelogs [option...] old new-a new-b [out]
DESCRIPTION
This program will use the 3 provided versions of the Debian
changelog to generate a merged changelog file. The resulting
changelog is stored in the file out or output to the standard
output if that parameter is not given.
Each entry is identified by its version number and they are
assumed to be not conflicting, they are simply merged in the
right order (by decreasing version number). When
--merge-prereleases is used, the part of the version number after
the last tilde is dropped so that 1.0-1~exp1 and 1.0-1~exp5 are
considered to be the same entry. When the same version is
available in both new-a and new-b, a standard line-based 3-way
merge is attempted (provided that the module Algorithm::Merge is
available — it's part of the package libalgorithm-merge-perl —
otherwise you get a global conflict on the content of the entry).
This program was introduced in dpkg 1.15.7.
OPTIONS
--merge-unreleased
Ignore the version number when the entries are marked as
UNRELEASED (since dpkg 1.21.0).
This is useful when you have diverging development for
versions that have not yet been released. For instance 2.1-1
is released, then development happens for the new 2.2-1 and
then for 2.3-1, where it makes sense to just end with a
coalesced entry for 2.3-1 including all the development done
in 2.2-1.
-m, --merge-prereleases
Drop the part after the last tilde in the version number when
doing version comparison to identify if two entries are
supposed to be the same or not.
This is useful when you keep using the same changelog entry
but you increase its version number regularly. For instance,
you might have 2.3-1~exp1, 2.3-1~exp2, ... until the official
release 2.3-1 and they are all the same changelog entry that
has evolved over time.
--help
Show the usage message and exit.
--version
Show the version and exit.
ENVIRONMENT
DPKG_COLORS
Sets the color mode (since dpkg 1.18.5). The currently
accepted values are: auto (default), always and never.
DPKG_NLS
If set, it will be used to decide whether to activate Native
Language Support, also known as internationalization (or
i18n) support (since dpkg 1.19.0). The accepted values are:
0 and 1 (default).
LIMITATIONS
Anything that is not parsed by Dpkg::Changelog is lost during the
merge. This might include stuff like comments which were not
supposed to be there, etc.
INTEGRATION WITH GIT
If you want to use this program to merge Debian changelog files
in a git repository, you have first to register a new merge
driver in .git/config or ~/.gitconfig:
[merge "dpkg-mergechangelogs"]
name = debian/changelog merge driver
driver = dpkg-mergechangelogs -m %O %A %B %A
Then you have to setup the merge attribute for the
debian/changelog file either in .gitattributes in the repository
itself, or in .git/info/attributes:
debian/changelog merge=dpkg-mergechangelogs
COLOPHON
This page is part of the dpkg (Debian Package Manager) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=dpkg⟩. This
page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository ⟨git
clone https://git.dpkg.org/git/dpkg/dpkg.git⟩ on 2024-06-14. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2024-05-21.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org