.\" dpkg manual page - dpkg-scanpackages(1) .\" .\" Copyright © 1996 Michael Shields .\" Copyright © 2006 Frank Lichtenheld .\" Copyright © 2007 Guillem Jover .\" Copyright © 2009 Raphaël Hertzog .\" .\" This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify .\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by .\" the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or .\" (at your option) any later version. .\" .\" This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, .\" but 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. .\" .\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License .\" along with this program. If not, see . . .TH dpkg\-scanpackages 1 "2012-05-07" "Debian Project" "dpkg utilities" .SH NAME dpkg\-scanpackages \- create Packages index files . .SH SYNOPSIS .B dpkg\-scanpackages .RI [ option "...] " binary-dir .RI [ override-file .RI [ path-prefix ]] .B > .I Packages . .SH DESCRIPTION .B dpkg\-scanpackages sorts through a tree of Debian binary packages and creates a Packages file, used by .BR apt (8), .BR dselect (1), etc, to tell the user what packages are available for installation. These Packages files are the same as those found on Debian archive sites and CD-ROMs. You might use .B dpkg\-scanpackages yourself if making a directory of local packages to install on a cluster of machines. .PP .B Note: If you want to access the generated Packages file with .B apt you will probably need to compress the file with .BR bzip2 (1) (generating a Packages.bz2 file) or .BR gzip (1) (generating a Packages.gz file). apt ignores uncompressed Packages files except on local access (i.e. .B file:// sources). .PP .I binary-dir is the name of the tree of the binary packages to process (for example, .BR contrib/binary\-i386 ). It is best to make this relative to the root of the Debian archive, because every Filename field in the new Packages file will start with this string. .PP .I override-file is the name of a file to read which contains information about how the package fits into the distribution (it can be a compressed file); see .BR deb\-override (5). .PP .I path-prefix is an optional string to be prepended to the Filename fields. .PP If more than one version of a package is found only the newest one is included in the output. If they have the same version and only differ in architecture only the first one found is used. . .SH OPTIONS .TP .BR \-t ", " \-\-type " \fItype\fP" Scan for *.\fItype\fP packages, instead of *.deb. .TP .BR \-e ", " \-\-extra\-override " \fIfile\fP" Scan \fIfile\fP to find supplementary overrides (the file can be compressed). See .BR deb\-extra\-override (5) for more information on its format. .TP .BR \-a ", " \-\-arch " \fIarch\fP" Use a pattern consisting of \fI*_all.deb\fP and \fI*_arch.deb\fP instead of scanning for all debs. .TP .BR \-m ", " \-\-multiversion Include all found packages in the output. .TP .BR \-M ", " \-\-medium " \fIid-string\fP" Add an X\-Medium field containing the value \fIid-string\fP. This field is required if you want to generate \fBPackages.cd\fP files for use by the multicd access method of dselect. .TP .BR \-? ", " \-\-help Show the usage message and exit. .TP .BR \-\-version Show the version and exit. . .SH DIAGNOSTICS .B dpkg\-scanpackages outputs the usual self-explanatory errors. It also warns about packages that are in the wrong subdirectory, are duplicated, have a Filename field in their control file, are missing from the override file, or have maintainer substitutions which do not take effect. . .SH SEE ALSO .BR dpkg (1), .BR dselect (1), .BR deb\-override (5), .BR deb\-extra\-override (5), .BR dpkg\-scansources (1).