Purpose of this document

This is meant to supplement the Packaging Tutorial to provide answers about choosing the right version number.

Format

Version number is in the format upstream_version-debian_patch_numberubuntuubuntu_patch_number.
You will generally be incrementing ubuntu_patch_number. *…unless it's a native package, in which case, there is only a simple version number.

Pre-check

Before deciding on the version number to use, check a few things:
- git pull or just check the repo to see if there have been additional changes while you've been working on your local copy. If there have been changes, there's likely an updated debian/changelog entry that you'll want to append ( dch -a).
- Check to see if your repo contains any pending changes. This should be shown by browsing in the repo to the file(s) in question or you can just look at all pending revisions. If there are any, you might want to check in on the status, as you can potentially get your changes rolled in.
- Check Launchpad for what's in the archives. The best way to do this is to use !upkg your_source_package in DuckDuckGo. Also see Packages.

Final decision

Read the changelog wiki.
If the final entry in debian/changelog is equal to the "release" version, increment ( dch -i).
If the final entry in debian/changelog is greater than the "release" version, append ( dch -a).
If there's something in "proposed," you'll probably want to increment, but check in and see if your change can't be rolled in.

⚠️NOTE⚠️ The minimum version number for a package in Ubuntu is upstream_version-0ubuntu1. The minimum version number for a package in Debian is upstream_version-1. In neither should the patch number be zero since the packaging itself constitutes a change to the upstream version.