Re: how to extract *.deb files, etc.

[joost@topaz.mdcc.cx (Joost Kooij)]

On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 09:40:18AM +0200, Sebastiaan wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Jeremy Gaddis wrote:
> 
> > As far as extracting Debian package files ("*.deb's") goes,
> > I've found the easiest way is to use "alien" (apt-get install
> > alien) and convert it to a tarball ("*.tar.gz").
> > 
> Why go that way? 
> $ mkdir /tmp/foo
> $ dpkg -X foo.deb /tmp/foo

Try this, even works on $proprietary_unix.

[  Of course, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't use 
   the appropriate high-level tools (like dselect).  :-)  ]


# what's that?
 man ar
 ar --help


# list archive members:
 ar t foo.deb

# same, with file attributes:
 ar tv foo.deb


# version of binary package:
 ar p foo.deb debian-binary


# the package metadata:
 ap p foo.deb control.tar.gz | file -
 ar p foo.deb control.tar.gz | zcat | file -
 ar p foo.deb control.tar.gz | tar ztf - 
 ar p foo.deb control.tar.gz | tar ztvf - 
 
# extract all metadata files to current directory:
 ar p foo.deb control.tar.gz | tar zxf -
 
# dump plain text contents of metadata to stdout:
 ar p foo.deb control.tar.gz | tar zxOf -

# with filenames interspersed: 
 ar p foo.deb control.tar.gz | tar zxvOf - 2>&1

# extract the control info to stdout:
 ar p foo.deb control.tar.gz | tar zxOf - ./control


# the package payload:
 ar p foo.deb data.tar.gz | file -
 ar p foo.deb data.tar.gz | zcat | file -
 ar p foo.deb data.tar.gz | tar ztf - 
 ar p foo.deb data.tar.gz | tar ztvf - 
 
# extract all installable files from package to current directory:
 ar p foo.deb data.tar.gz | tar zxf -
 
# extract all installable files from package to /:
 ar p foo.deb data.tar.gz | ( cd / ; tar zxf - )
 
# extract the copyright info from package contents to stdout:
 ar p foo.deb data.tar.gz | tar zxOf - "*/doc/*/copyright"
 
Cheers,


Joost