debhelper(7)

🌸 debhelper-obsolete-compat 💖

okay bestie, listen UP — this is debhelper(7), the Debhelper manual, and this particular page is the throwback vault: a full list of every compat level that is no longer supported. it's giving historical archive realness, and honestly? iconic but retired. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

debhelper-obsolete-compat — a whole list of no-longer-supported compat levels, periodt.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so basically this doc holds all the upgrade tea for every compat level that has since been yeeted from support. which means it's mostly here for historical vibes and to help you if you're trapped in some ancient non-supported compat level and trying to claw your way up to a supported one. 🫶

if you're upgrading from a compat level that is still supported, head over to debhelper(7) instead, bestie, that's the one you want.

For upgrades from supported compat levels, please see debhelper(7).

✨ UPGRADE LIST FOR COMPAT LEVELS ✨

here's the full rundown of the now-obsolete compat levels and everything that changed in each one. no cap, every single one. 💅

💀 v7

this one is the lowest supported compatibility level.

changes from v6 are:

• dh_install will fall back to looking for files in debian/tmp if it doesn't find them in the current directory (or wherever you tell it to look using --sourcedir). this lets dh_install interoperate with dh_auto_install, which installs to debian/tmp, without needing any special parameters. slay.
• dh_clean will read debian/clean and delete the files listed in there.
• dh_clean will delete toplevel *-stamp files.
• dh_installchangelogs will guess at what file is the upstream changelog if none is specified.

💀 v6

changes from v5 are:

• commands that generate maintainer script fragments will order the fragments in reverse order for the prerm and postrm scripts. literally backwards, on purpose.
• dh_installwm will install a slave manpage link for x-window-manager.1.gz, if it sees the man page in usr/share/man/man1 in the package build directory.
• dh_builddeb did not previously delete everything matching DH_ALWAYS_EXCLUDE, if it was set to a list of things to exclude, such as CVS:.svn:.git. now it does. glow up.
• dh_installman allows overwriting existing man pages in the package build directory. in previous compatibility levels it silently refuses to do this — rude of it tbh.

This mode is deprecated. 💀

💀 v5

changes from v4 are:

• comments are ignored in debhelper config files.
• dh_strip --dbg-package now specifies the name of a package to put debugging symbols in, not the packages to take the symbols from. it flipped the whole meaning, bestie, keep up.
• dh_installdocs skips installing empty files.
• dh_install errors out if wildcards expand to nothing.

💀 v4

changes from v3 are:

• dh_makeshlibs -V will not include the Debian part of the version number in the generated dependency line in the shlibs file.
• you are encouraged to put the new ${misc:Depends} into debian/control to supplement the ${shlibs:Depends} field.
• dh_fixperms will make all files in bin/ directories and in etc/init.d executable.
• dh_link will correct existing links to conform with policy.

This mode is deprecated. 💀

💀 v3

this one works like v2, with the following additions:

• debhelper config files support globbing via * and ?, when appropriate. to turn this off and use those characters raw, just prefix with a backslash.
• dh_makeshlibs makes the postinst and postrm scripts call ldconfig.
• every file in etc/ is automatically flagged as a conffile by dh_installdeb.

This mode is deprecated. 💀

💀 v2

in this mode, debhelper will consistently use debian/package as the package tree directory for every package that is built.

This mode is deprecated. 💀

💀 v1

this is the original debhelper compatibility level, and so it is the default one, no cap. in this mode, debhelper will use debian/tmp as the package tree directory for the first binary package listed in the control file, while using debian/package for all other packages listed in the control file.

This mode is deprecated. 💀

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

• debhelper(7)

✨ AUTHORS ✨

the legends who made this happen:

• Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>
• Joey Hess

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and that's a wrap, bestie 🎀 this was debhelper(7), from version 14.5ubuntu1, dated 2026-09-21. go forth and upgrade your compat level, you absolute icon 👑💖