.\" Copyright (C) 1996 Michael Shields <shields@crosslink.net>
.\" Copyright (C) 2008 Zack Weinberg <zackw@panix.com>
.\" 
.\" This is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify
.\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
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.\" or (at your option) any later version.
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.\" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
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.TH deb\-shlibs 5 "2008-02-17" "Debian Project" "dpkg utilities"
.SH NAME
deb\-shlibs \- Debian shared library information file
.
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
.B shlibs
files map shared library names and versions
.RI ( sonames )
to dependencies suitable for a package control file.  There is one
entry per line. Blank lines are \fBnot\fP allowed.  Lines beginning
with an \fB#\fP character are considered commentary, and are ignored.
All other lines must have the format
.IP
.RI [ tag: ]
.I library
.I version
.I dependencies
.PP
The \fIlibrary\fP and \fIversion\fP fields are whitespace-delimited,
but the \fIdependencies\fP field extends to the end of the line.  The
\fItag\fP field is optional and normally not needed.
.PP
See the Debian Policy Manual for further details.
.
.SH EXAMPLES
.PP
The
.B shlibs
file for a typical library package, named 
.IR libcrunch1 ,
that provides one library whose soname is
.IR libcrunch.so.1 ,
might read
.IP
libcrunch 1 libcrunch1 (>= 1.2-1)
.PP
The \fIdependencies\fP
must mention the most recent version of the package that added new
symbols to the library: in the above example, new symbols were added to
version 1.2 of
.IR libcrunch .
This is not the only reason the dependencies might need to be
tightened; again, see the Debian Policy Manual for details.
.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR dpkg\-shlibdeps (1),
.BR deb\-symbols (5).