Is it possible to have multiple lines for any type of field in a dpkg control file? This is not about line continuation, but e.g. Depends interspersed with Recommends like so:
Depends: git, etckeeper, apt-file
Recommends: equivs
Depends: mplayer, pidgin, dlocate, pwsafe, ciso
Recommends: aria2
And so on. Is this allowed, is it unspecified (and some tool is going to cough on it) or is it explicitly forbidden? (Couldn't find anything in debian-policy, either)
Best Answer
No you can't do this. It had never occurred to me to try such a thing, but I took a stab at it. I tried building a package with the following in the
debian/control
file:dpkg
did not like it one bit:In fact, now that I go looking for it, this is explicitly forbidden in Debian Policy, 5.1 Syntax of control files: