NAME¶
dpkg-deb - Debian package archive (.deb) manipulation tool
SYNOPSIS¶
dpkg-deb [
option...]
command
DESCRIPTION¶
dpkg-deb packs, unpacks and provides information about Debian archives.
Use
dpkg to install and remove packages from your system.
You can also invoke
dpkg-deb by calling
dpkg with whatever options
you want to pass to
dpkg-deb.
dpkg will spot that you wanted
dpkg-deb and run it for you.
COMMANDS¶
- -b, --build directory
[archive|directory]
- Creates a debian archive from the filesystem tree stored in
directory. directory must have a DEBIAN subdirectory,
which contains the control information files such as the control file
itself. This directory will not appear in the binary package's
filesystem archive, but instead the files in it will be put in the binary
package's control information area.
Unless you specify --nocheck, dpkg-deb will read
DEBIAN/control and parse it. It will check it for syntax errors and
other problems, and display the name of the binary package being built.
dpkg-deb will also check the permissions of the maintainer scripts
and other files found in the DEBIAN control information directory.
If no archive is specified then dpkg-deb will write the
package into the file directory.deb.
If the archive to be created already exists it will be overwritten.
If the second argument is a directory then dpkg-deb will write to the
file package_version_arch.deb,
or package_version.deb if no
Architecture field is present in the package control file. When a
target directory is specified, rather than a file, the --nocheck
option may not be used (since dpkg-deb needs to read and parse the
package control file to determine which filename to use).
- -I, --info archive [control-file-name...]
- Provides information about a binary package archive.
If no control-file-names are specified then it will print a summary
of the contents of the package as well as its control file.
If any control-file-names are specified then dpkg-deb will
print them in the order they were specified; if any of the components
weren't present it will print an error message to stderr about each one
and exit with status 2.
- -W, --show archive
- Provides information about a binary package archive in the format
specified by the --showformat argument. The default format displays
the package's name and version on one line, separated by a tabulator.
- -f, --field archive
[control-field-name...]
- Extracts control file information from a binary package archive.
If no control-file-fields are specified then it will print the whole
control file.
If any are specified then dpkg-deb will print their contents, in the
order in which they appear in the control file. If more than one
control-file-field is specified then dpkg-deb will precede
each with its field name (and a colon and space).
No errors are reported for fields requested but not found.
- -c, --contents archive
- Lists the contents of the filesystem tree archive portion of the package
archive. It is currently produced in the format generated by tar's
verbose listing.
- -x, --extract archive directory
- Extracts the filesystem tree from a package archive into the specified
directory.
Note that extracting a package to the root directory will not result
in a correct installation! Use dpkg to install packages.
directory (but not its parents) will be created if necessary, and its
permissions modified to match the contents of the package.
- -X, --vextract archive directory
- Is like --extract (-x) with --verbose (-v)
which prints a listing of the files extracted as it goes.
- -R, --raw-extract archive directory
- Extracts the filesystem tree from a package archive into a specified
directory, and the control information files into a DEBIAN subdirectory of
the specified directory.
The target directory (but not its parents) will be created if
necessary.
- --ctrl-tarfile archive
- Extracts the control data from a binary package and sends it to standard
output in tar format (since dpkg 1.17.14). Together with
tar(1) this can be used to extract a particular control file from a
package archive. The input archive will always be processed
sequentially.
- --fsys-tarfile archive
- Extracts the filesystem tree data from a binary package and sends it to
standard output in tar format. Together with tar(1) this can
be used to extract a particular file from a package archive. The input
archive will always be processed sequentially.
- -e, --control archive [directory]
- Extracts the control information files from a package archive into the
specified directory.
If no directory is specified then a subdirectory DEBIAN in the
current directory is used.
The target directory (but not its parents) will be created if
necessary.
- -?, --help
- Show the usage message and exit.
- --version
- Show the version and exit.
OPTIONS¶
- --showformat=format
- This option is used to specify the format of the output --show will
produce. The format is a string that will be output for each package
listed.
The string may reference any status field using the "${
field-name}" form, a list of the valid fields can be easily
produced using -I on the same package. A complete explanation of
the formatting options (including escape sequences and field tabbing) can
be found in the explanation of the --showformat option in
dpkg-query(1).
The default for this field is "${Package}\t${Version}\n".
- -zcompress-level
- Specify which compression level to use on the compressor backend, when
building a package (default is 9 for gzip and bzip2, 6 for xz and lzma).
The accepted values are 0-9 with: 0 being mapped to compressor none for
gzip and 0 mapped to 1 for bzip2. Before dpkg 1.16.2 level 0 was
equivalent to compressor none for all compressors.
- -Scompress-strategy
- Specify which compression strategy to use on the compressor backend, when
building a package (since dpkg 1.16.2). Allowed values are none
(since dpkg 1.16.4), filtered, huffman, rle and
fixed for gzip (since dpkg 1.17.0) and extreme for xz.
- -Zcompress-type
- Specify which compression type to use when building a package. Allowed
values are gzip, xz, bzip2 (deprecated), lzma
(deprecated), and none (default is xz).
- --uniform-compression
- Specify that the same compression parameters should be used for all
archive members (i.e. control.tar and data.tar). Otherwise
only the data.tar member will use those parameters. The only
supported compression types allowed to be uniformly used are none,
gzip and xz.
- --deb-format=format
- Set the archive format version used when building (since dpkg 1.17.0).
Allowed values are 2.0 for the new format, and 0.939000 for
the old one (default is 2.0).
The old archive format is less easily parsed by non-Debian tools and is now
obsolete; its only use is when building packages to be parsed by versions
of dpkg older than 0.93.76 (September 1995), which was released as i386
a.out only.
- --new
- This is a legacy alias for --deb-format=2.0.
- --old
- This is a legacy alias for --deb-format=0.939000.
- --nocheck
- Inhibits dpkg-deb --build's usual checks on the proposed contents
of an archive. You can build any archive you want, no matter how broken,
this way.
- -v, --verbose
- Enables verbose output. This currently only affects --extract
making it behave like --vextract.
- -D, --debug
- Enables debugging output. This is not very interesting.
ENVIRONMENT¶
- TMPDIR
- If set, dpkg-deb will use it as the directory in which to create
temporary files and directories.
NOTES¶
Do not attempt to use just
dpkg-deb to install software! You must use
dpkg proper to ensure that all the files are correctly placed and the
package's scripts run and its status and contents recorded.
BUGS¶
dpkg-deb -I package1.deb package2.deb does
the wrong thing.
There is no authentication on
.deb files; in fact, there isn't even a
straightforward checksum. (Higher level tools like APT support authenticating
.deb packages retrieved from a given repository, and most packages
nowadays provide an md5sum control file generated by debian/rules. Though this
is not directly supported by the lower level tools.)
SEE ALSO¶
deb(5),
deb-control(5),
dpkg(1),
dselect(1).