LINTIAN(1)

📦
version 2.139.0ubuntu2 · 11 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

okay bestie, gather round 💖 you're looking at lintian(1), aka the Debian Package Checker — she's the friend who reads every single line of your package so you don't have to, and she will tell you what's wrong. no cap. let's go 🦋

🌸 NAME 🌸

lintian — your girl for static analysis of Debian packages 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

lintian [action] [options] [packages] ...

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So what does she actually do? Lintian dissects Debian packages and reports bugs and policy violations. Like, she takes your package apart piece by piece and is like "girl, this is a problem." She's got automated checks for so many aspects of Debian policy, plus a bunch of checks for common errors that just keep happening to everyone. 🫶

Now, the way you hand her stuff to look at? Two ways to specify binary, udeb or source packages for her to process:

  • by file name — the .deb file for a binary package, or the .dsc file for a source package
  • or by naming a .changes file 📄

If you specify a .changes file, Lintian will process all the packages listed in that file. This is so convenient when you're checking a new package before uploading it — highly recommend, it's giving pre-flight check energy ✈️✨

If you specify packages to be checked, or you use the option --packages-from-file, the packages you requested will be processed. Otherwise, if debian/changelog exists, it gets parsed to figure out the name of the .changes file to look for in the parent directory. The details live in "CHECKING LAST BUILD" — go look if you're curious 👀

👑 OPTIONS 👑

💅 Actions of the lintian command

(Only one action can be specified per invocation — pick a lane, bestie, she's monogamous 😌)
  • -c, --check — Run all the checks over the specified packages. This is the default action, so if you just vibe and don't specify anything, this is what happens ✨
  • -C chk1,chk2,..., --check-part chk1,chk2,... — Run only the checks you named. You can either specify the name of the check script or the abbreviation, whichever you feel like. For the deets, see the "CHECKS" section below 📋
  • -F, --ftp-master-rejects — Run only the checks that issue tags that result in automatic rejects from the Debian upload queue 🚫📦 Heads up: the list of such tags gets refreshed with each Lintian release, so it may be slightly out of date if it changed recently. She's doing her best 😭

This is implemented via a profile, so this option cannot be used together with --profile — they don't get along, it's giving exes at the same party 💀

  • -T tag1,tag2,..., --tags tag1,tag2,... — Run only the checks that issue the requested tags. The tests for other tags within the check scripts will still be run, but the tags themselves will not be issued — she does the work, she just doesn't say it out loud 🤫

With this option, all tags listed will be displayed regardless of the display settings. Iconic, honestly.

  • --tags-from-file filename — Same functionality as --tags, but the list of tags gets read from a file instead 📁 Blank lines and lines beginning with # are ignored. All other lines are taken to be tag names, or comma-separated lists of tag names, to (potentially) issue.

With this option, all tags listed will be displayed regardless of the display settings. Same deal as above 💖

  • -X chk1,chk2,..., --dont-check-part chk1,chk2,... — Run all but the specified checks. Yes, she's a "run everything except this one thing" girlie 🙈 You can either specify the name of the check script or the abbreviation. For the deets, see the "CHECKS" section below.

🌈 General options

  • -h, --help — Display usage information and exit. Your classic "help me bestie" move 🫶
  • -q, --quiet — Suppress all informational messages, including override comments (the ones normally shown with --show-overrides) 🤐

This option is silently ignored if --debug is given — so if you're debugging, quiet mode does not exist, periodt. Otherwise, if both --verbose and --quiet are used, the last of these two options takes effect (last one wins, that's the rule 👑).

This option overrides the verbose and the quiet variable in the configuration file. In the configuration file, this option is enabled by using the quiet variable. The verbose and quiet variables may not both appear in the config file — one or the other, she's not doing drama today 💅

  • -v, --verbose — Display verbose messages. She's chatty, we love her 💬

If --debug is used, this option is always enabled. Otherwise, if both --verbose and --quiet are used (and --debug is not used), the last of these two options takes effect.

This option overrides the quiet variable in the configuration file. In the configuration file, this option is enabled by using the verbose variable. And again: the verbose and quiet variables may not both appear in the config file ✨

  • -d, --debug — Display debug messages. 🐛

This option implies --verbose — she can't debug quietly, it's not in her nature.

  • -V, --version — Display the lintian version number and exit. Say hi, know who you're dealing with 💁
  • --print-version — Print the unadorned version number and exit. No frills, no garnish, just the number. So minimal of her 🌸

🦋 Behavior options for lintian

  • --color (auto|never|always|html) — Whether to colorize tags in lintian output based on their visibility 🎨 The default is auto, which will use color only if the output is going to a terminal. never will never use color, always will always use color, and html will use HTML <span> tags with a color style attribute (instead of ANSI color escape sequences) — yes bestie, HTML output, she contains multitudes.

This option overrides the color variable in the configuration file.

  • --hyperlinks (on|off) — Shows text-based hyperlinks to tag descriptions on lintian.debian.org on terminals that support it 🔗 The default is on for terminals that support it, unless the user selected --color never. This currently only works in GNOME Terminal — so, like, a very specific vibe.

This option overrides the color variable in the configuration file.

  • --default-display-level — Reset the current display level back to the default 🔄 Basically, this option behaves exactly like passing the following options to lintian:
-L ">=warning"

The primary use for this is to make sure lintian's display level has been reset to the built-in default values. Notably, this can be used to override display settings earlier on the command-line, or in the lintian configuration file. So it's giving "reset the vibes, start fresh" ✨

Further changes to the display level can be done after this option. Example: --default-display-level --display-info gives you the default display level plus informational (I:) tags 🎀

  • --display-source X — Only display tags from the source X (e.g. the Policy Manual or the Developer Reference). This option can be used multiple times to add additional sources — stack 'em up, bestie 📚 Example sources are policy or devref, being the Policy Manual and the Developer Reference (respectively).

The entire list of sources can be found in $LINTIAN_BASE/data/output/manual-references 🗂️

  • -E, --display-experimental, --no-display-experimental — Control whether to display experimental (X:) tags. They are normally suppressed 🙈

If a tag is marked experimental, this means the code that generates this message is not as well tested as the rest of Lintian, and might still give surprising results. Feel free to ignore Experimental messages that do not seem to make sense — no guilt, fr fr. Though of course bug reports are always welcome (particularly if they include fixes 👀).

These options override the display-experimental variable in the configuration file.

  • --fail-on {error | warning | info | pedantic | experimental | override | none} — Causes lintian to exit with a program status of 2 for the given conditions 💀 This option can be a comma-separated list, or it may be specified multiple times.

The default is error. Also, warning does not imply error. Please specify both if you want both — she's not a mind reader, she's a static analysis tool 🫠

  • -i, --info — Print explanatory information about each problem discovered, in addition to the lintian error tags 📖 To print a long tag description without running lintian, see lintian-explain-tags(1) or check the website at https://lintian.debian.org.

To negate it, please use --no-info.

This option overrides the info (or no-info) variable in the configuration file.

  • -I, --display-info — Display informational (I:) tags as well. They are normally suppressed. (This is equivalent to -L ">=info".) ⭐

This option overrides the display-info variable in the configuration file.

Note: display-level and display-info may not both appear in the configuration file. Pick one, girl. 💅
  • -L [+|-|=][>=|>|=|<|<=][S|C|S/C], --display-level [+|-|=][>=|>|=|<|<=][S|C|S/C] — Fine-grained selection of tags to be displayed 🎚️ It is possible to add, remove or set the levels to display, specifying a visibility (error, warning, info, pedantic, or classification). The default settings are equivalent to -L ">=warning".

The value consists of 3 parts, where two of them are optional. The parts are:

  • modifier operator — How to affect the current display level. Can be one of add to (+), remove from (-) or set to (=) the display level(s) denoted by the following selection.

The default value is = (i.e. set the display level).

  • set operator — The visibility to be selected. The operator can be one of >=, >, =, < or <=. As an example, this can be used to select all info (and more serious) tags via >=info.

The default value is =, which means "exactly" the given visibility.

This option overrides the display-level variable in the configuration file. The value of the display-level in the configuration file should be space separated entries in the same format as passed via command-line.

Note: display-level may not be used with display-info or pedantic in the configuration file.
  • -o, --no-override — Ignore all overrides provided by the package. This option will overrule --show-overrides — sorry not sorry, overrides are cancelled 🚫

This option overrides the override variable in the configuration file.

  • --pedantic — Display pedantic (P:) tags as well. They are normally suppressed. (This is equivalent to -L "+=pedantic".) 🧐

Pedantic tags are Lintian at her most pickiest, and include checks for particular Debian packaging styles and checks that many people disagree with. Expect false positives, and expect Lintian tags that you don't consider useful if you use this option. Adding overrides for pedantic tags is probably not worth the effort — she's telling you this for your own good 😭

This option overrides the pedantic variable in the configuration file.

Note: pedantic and display-level may not both appear in the configuration file.
  • --profile vendor[/prof] — Use the profile from vendor (or the profile with that name). If the profile name does not contain a slash, the default profile for that vendor is chosen.

As an example, if you are on Ubuntu and want to use Lintian's Debian checks, you can use:

--profile debian

Likewise, on a Debian machine you can use this to request the Ubuntu checks. Cross-vibing, we love to see it 🌈

If the token {VENDOR} appears in the profile name, lintian will substitute the token with a vendor name to find the profile. Lintian uses Dpkg::Vendor to determine the best vendor to use (the closer to the current vendor, the better). This is mostly useful for people implementing their own checks on top of Lintian — DIY icon behavior 👑

If not specified, the default value is {VENDOR}/main.

Please refer to the Lintian User Manual for the full documentation of profiles 📚💖

more coming, bestie — stay tuned 💜

  • --show-overrides — bestie this one decides whether tags that got overridden still show up in your output or not 👀
    • --show-overrides will show the overridden tags and mark them as overridden (using an O code) ✨
    • If the overridden tags are being shown, the related override comments get displayed too (unless --quiet is on, in which case shhh 🙈). Pls refer to the Lintian User Manual for the docs on how lintian relates comments to a given override 📖
    • Wanna negate it, i.e. suppress the showing of overridden tags? Use --no-show-overrides 💅
    • This option overrides the show-overrides (or no-show-overrides) variable in the configuration file. it's giving "command line said so, periodt" 💁
  • --suppress-tags tag1,tag2,... — suppress the listed tags 🙅‍♀️ They will not be reported if they occur and will not affect the exit status of Lintian. no cap, they just vanish ✨
    • This option can be given multiple times and can be mixed with --suppress-tags-from-file 🫶
    • You can use it together with --dont-check-part ("Not those checks nor these tags") and --check-part ("Only those checks, but not these tags (from those checks)") to further reduce the selection of tags 🎯
    • When used with --tags, this option is mostly ignored. lowkey sidelined 💀
  • --suppress-tags-from-file file — suppress all tags listed in the given file 📄 Blank lines and lines beginning with # are ignored. All other lines are taken to be tag names or comma-separated lists of tag names to suppress. The suppressed tags will not be reported if they occur and will not affect the exit status of Lintian 🌸
    • Tags parsed from the file will be handled as if they had been given to the --suppress-tags option (e.g. ignored if --tags is used) 🦋
  • --tag-display-limit[=NUM] — by default, lintian limits itself to emitting at most 4 instances of each tag per processable when STDOUT is a TTY 🖥️ This option specifies that limit ✨
    • When STDOUT is not a TTY, lintian has no limit. wild. unhinged. no thoughts head empty 💀
    • To disable the limit, please use a value of zero 0 🙌
    • This option overrides the tag-display-limit variable in the configuration file 🔧

⚙️ Configuration options ⚙️

  • --cfg configfile — read the configuration from configfile rather than the default locations 📂 This option overrides the LINTIAN_CFG environment variable 👑
  • --no-cfg — do not read any configuration file at all 🚫 This option overrides the --cfg above. so iconic, so final 💅
  • --ignore-lintian-env — ignore all environment variables starting with LINTIAN_ 🙈
    • This option is mostly useful for applications running lintian for checking packages that do not want the invoking user to affect the result (by setting LINTIAN_PROFILE etc.) 🛡️
    • Note it does not cause lintian to ignore the entire environment like TMPDIR or DEB_VENDOR. The latter can affect the default profile (or "{VENDOR}" token for --profile) 👀
    • Should usually be combined with --no-user-dirs (or unsetting $HOME and all XDG_ variables) 🫶
  • --include-dir dir — use dir as an additional "LINTIAN_BASE" 📁 The directory is expected to have a similar layout to the LINTIAN_BASE (if it exists), but does not need to be a full self-contained root 🌱
    • lintian will check this directory for (additional) profiles, data files, support libraries and checks 🔍 The latter two imply that Lintian may attempt to load and execute code from this directory ⚠️ (yes bestie, that's a real thing, be careful who you point this at)
    • This option may appear more than once; each time adding an additional directory. Directories are searched in the order they appear on the command line 🔢
    • The additional directories will be checked after the user directories (though see --no-user-dirs) and before the core LINTIAN_BASE 🗂️
    • > Note: This option should be the very first if given. like, FIRST first. don't play 🚨
  • -j X, --jobs=X — set the limit for how many jobs Lintian will run in parallel 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️ This option overrides the jobs variable in the configuration file ⚙️
    • By default Lintian will use nproc to determine a reasonable default (or 2, if the nproc fails) 🧮 so it just kinda figures it out itself, main character energy ✨
  • --user-dirs, --no-user-dirs — by default, lintian will check $HOME and /etc for files supplied by the user or the local sysadmin (e.g. config files and profiles) 🏠 This default can be disabled (and re-enabled) by using --no-user-dirs (and --user-dirs, respectively) 🔁
    • These options will not affect the inclusion of LINTIAN_BASE, which is always included. always. no takebacks 👑
    • These option can appear multiple times, in which case the last of them to appear determines the result 🎯
    • Note that if the intention is only to disable the user's $HOME, then unsetting $HOME and XDG_*_HOME may suffice. Alternatively, /etc can be "re-added" by using --include-dir (caveat: /etc/lintianrc will be ignored by this) 🧐
    • If the intention is to avoid (unintentional) side-effects from the calling user, then this option could be combined with --ignore-lintian-env 🛡️
    • If for some reason --no-user-dirs cannot be used, then consider unsetting $HOME and all the $XDG_* variables (not just the $XDG_*_HOME ones) 🙏
    • > Note: This option should be the very first if given. same energy as above, first or it doesn't count 🚨

🛠️ Developer/Special usage options 🛠️

  • --allow-root — override lintian's warning when it is run with superuser privileges 👑🔥 like, you're telling it "yes girl I know what I'm doing"
  • --packages-from-file X — the line is read as the path to a file to process (all whitespace is included!) 😳 like, ALL of it, don't @ me
    • If X is -, Lintian will read the packages from STDIN 📥
  • --perf-debug — enable performance related debug logging to STDERR 📊
    • The data logged and the format used is subject to change with every release. it's unstable bestie, don't build a whole app on it 💀
    • Note that some of the information may also be available (possibly in a different format) with the --debug option 👀

🌸 FILES 🌸

Lintian looks for its configuration file in the following locations, in this order 🥇:

  1. The argument given to --cfg
  2. $LINTIAN_CFG
  3. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lintian/lintianrc
  4. XDG_DIR/lintian/lintianrc
    • Where XDG_DIR is a directory listed in $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS (or /etc/xdg if $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is unset) 🗺️
  5. $HOME/.lintianrc
    • Please consider using the XDG based variant above (usually, in ~/.config) 💅 yes queen, move on
  6. /etc/lintianrc

Lintian uses the following directories 📂:

  • /tmp — Lintian defaults to creating a temporary lab directory in /tmp 🧪 To change the directory used, set the TMPDIR environment variable to a suitable directory. TMPDIR can be set in the configuration file ⚙️
  • /usr/share/lintian/checks — Scripts that check aspects of a package ✅
  • /usr/share/lintian/collection — Scripts that collect information about a package and store it for use by the check scripts 📦
  • /usr/share/lintian/data — Supporting data used by Lintian checks and for output formatting 📊
  • /usr/share/lintian/lib — Utility scripts used by the other lintian scripts 🧰

For binary packages, Lintian looks for overrides in a file named usr/share/lintian/overrides/<package> inside the binary package, where <package> is the name of the binary package 📦 This is usually created automatically by debhelper from the debian/<package>.lintian-overrides file ✨

For source packages, Lintian looks for overrides in debian/source/lintian-overrides and then in debian/source.lintian-overrides if the first file is not found 🕵️‍♀️ The first path is preferred 👑 See the Lintian User's Manual for the syntax of overrides 📖

Lintian errors in automatically-generated packages (such as xxx-dbgsym) and in the changes file are currently not overrideable. sorry bestie, some things you just gotta live with 😭

📝 CONFIGURATION FILE 📝

The configuration file can be used to specify default values for some options 💖 The general format is:

option = value

All whitespace adjacent to the "=" sign as well as leading and trailing whitespace is ignored 🧹 However whitespace within the value is respected, as demonstrated by this example:

 # Parsed as "opt1" with value "val1"
    opt1    =   val1
 # Parsed as "opt2" with value "val2.1  val2.2     val2.3"
 opt2 = val2.1  val2.2     val2.3

Unless otherwise specified, no option may appear more than once 🚫 Lintian will ignore empty lines or lines starting with the #-character 💬

Generally options will be the long form of the command-line option without the leading dashes 🎀 There some exceptions (such as --profile), where Lintian uses the same name as the environment variable 👀

Lintian only allows a subset of the options specified in the configuration file; please refer to the individual options in "OPTIONS" 📋

In the configuration file, all options listed must have a value, even if they do not accept a value on command line (e.g. --pedantic) 🧐 The values "yes", "y", "1", or "true" will enable such an option and "no", "n", "0" or "false" will disable it. Prior to the 2.5.2 release, these values were case sensitive 😭 (back in the day they were picky, we respect the journey)

For other options, they generally take the same values as they do on the command line 💫 Though some options allow a slightly different format (e.g. --display-level). These exceptions are explained for the relevant options in "OPTIONS" 📖

Beyond command line options, it is also allowed to specify the environment variable "TMPDIR" in the configuration file ⚙️

A sample configuration file could look like:

 # Sample configuration file for lintian
 #
 # Set the default profile (--profile)
 LINTIAN_PROFILE = debian

 # Set the default TMPDIR for lintian to /var/tmp/lintian
 # - useful if /tmp is tmpfs with "limited" size.
 TMPDIR = /var/tmp/lintian/

 # Show info (I:) tags by default (--display-info)
 #  NB: this cannot be used with display-level
 display-info=yes

 # Ignore all overrides (--no-override)
 #  NB: called "override" in the config file
 #      and has inverted value!
 override = no

 # Automatically determine if color should be used
 color = auto

🚪 EXIT STATUS 🚪

  1. 0 — Normal operation. we love a clean exit, slay 💚
  2. 1 — Lintian run-time error. An error message is sent to stderr 😭
  3. 2 — Detected a condition specified via the --fail-on option. This can be used to trigger a non-zero exit value in case of policy violations 🚨

🔍 CHECKING LAST BUILD 🔍

okay so bestie, when you run Lintian inside an unpacked package dir and you don't hand it any package selection arguments, it's not gonna just sit there confused 💅 it'll go looking. First it peeks at debian/changelog to figure out the source and version of the package, and then it tries to hunt down a matching .changes file for that source + version combo. detective mode: activated 🕵️

Here's the directory search order, no cap:

And in each one of those dirs, it tries to find a .changes file using these as the architecture, in this order:

  • $DEB_BUILD_ARCH (or dpkg --print-architecture) — that's the DEB_BUILD_ARCH environment variable; if it's not set, dpkg --print-architecture steps in instead.
  • $DEB_HOST_ARCH — the DEB_HOST_ARCH environment variable.
  • dpkg --print-foreign-architectures — if dpkg(1) looks like it supports multi-arch, then every architecture that dpkg --print-foreign-architectures lists gets used, in the order dpkg returns them.
  • multi — the pseudo architecture used by mergechanges(1).
  • all — used when building architecture indep packages only (like dpkg-buildpackage -A).
  • source — used for "source only" builds (like dpkg-buildpackage -S).

If a .changes file matching any of those combos exists, Lintian processes the first match exactly as if you'd passed it on the command line. iconic behavior honestly ✨

But if it can't find any .changes file at all? It prints a list of all the locations it tried on STDERR and exits 0. very "I looked everywhere, here's my receipts" of it 💀

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

  • $ lintian foo.changes — check the changes file itself, plus any binary, udeb or source package listed in it.
  • $ lintian foo.deb — check binary package foo given by foo.deb.
  • $ lintian foo.dsc — check source package foo given by foo.dsc.
  • $ lintian foo.dsc -L +info — check source package foo given by foo.dsc, including info tags.
  • $ lintian -i foo.changes — check the changes file and, if listed, the source and binary package of the upload. The output will contain detailed information about the reported tags.
  • $ lintian — assuming debian/changelog exists, look for a changes file for the source in the parent dir. Otherwise, print usage information and exit.

💀 BUGS 💀

ngl, Lintian does not have any locking mechanisms yet.

Running several Lintian processes on the same laboratory simultaneously is likely to fail or corrupt the laboratory. fr fr, don't do it 🙈

If you discover any other bugs in lintian, please contact the authors.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

lintian-explain-tags(1), Lintian User Manual (/usr/share/doc/lintian/lintian.html)

Packaging tools: debhelper(7), dh_make(1), dpkg-buildpackage(1).

👑 AUTHORS 👑

  • Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>
  • Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl>
  • Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>

Please use the email address <lintian-maint@debian.org> for Lintian related comments. 🫶

okay that's the whole entire page bestie, you made it 🎀 this is Lintian v2.139.0ubuntu2, dated 2026-10-08, and it lives in section LINTIAN(1). go forth and lint responsibly, mwah 💅✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from