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dpkg: can a single file be extracted?



Can you please provide an easy way to extract specified files from a 
deb package?  Is there one already?

I needed only one *.el from emacs-el-19.30.  In trying to get at this
one file, it was necessary to extract the (about) 10MB of the package
into a temporary directory.  I tried dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile, but this
just seemed to extract the contents of the tar file to standard
output.  It would have helped to have been able to extract a file, as
one can do with tar files.  

Have you truly failed to provide a tool for edification of the masses,
or is this an oversight on my part?  I couldn't easily figure out how to do it.

The "dpkg --help" output could surely be easily improved.  I think
the key for the output screen for "dpkg -l"  also needs to be improved.
But at this point, utility is the issue.


A further remark.

In the dpkg 1.1.3 source, which I was forced to compile to use on a
slackware system (I do not recommend this except under the most
extreme caution, as it is even thornier than trying to install a
Slackware package on a debian system), is an excellent man page.  I
installed it on my system, but when I upgraded to dpkg 1.1.5, the man
page was overwritten.  Can this please be made available in an alpha
or beta state?

Back to work.  In installing the single file I needed, I managed the
foolishness to delete all of /usr/lib/emacs/19.30/lisp/*elc .  Because
I cannot just extract these files in any way I understand from the deb
package, I am forced to reinstall emacs.  Sometimes one even needs to
get inside a hermetically sealed unit.  All this is a pain when you
are running on 3 to 10 MB free disk space . 


Alan Davis



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