How to produce the file Packages

[eck@sc10.dseg.ti.com (Terry Eck)]

Hi

I'm new to Debian and have just installed the system by downloading
almost all the the binary tree. Everything appears fine. I did have 
some problems with dselect (understanding on my part). 

What I'd like to know is how is the file Packages constructed. In this
file there are descriptions and a path to where the apps.deb is located.
Would it be possible to dump several *.deb files into a directory and
construct the file Packages at the top level and then run dselect on the
resulting tree. Is there a program which will construct the file Packages
from a tree containing *.deb files?

Can anyone point me to more information to read on how dselect works.

BTW, I'm a former Slackware user currently running RedHat and looking
at Debian.

Thanks,
Terry
_____________________________________________________________________________
Terry Eck                           "Unix is a user friendly OS...
eck@sc10.dseg.ti.com                      it's just choosy about its friends"


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