Bug#703366: RFH: apt-file -- search for files within Debian packages (command-line interface)

[Stefan Fritsch <sf@sfritsch.de>]

Package: wnpp
Severity: normal

We are looking for a developer / co-maintainer for apt-file.


The package description is:
 apt-file is a command line tool for searching files contained in packages
 for the APT packaging system. You can search in which package a file is
 included or list the contents of a package without installing or fetching it.
 If you would prefer not to download the large files used by apt-file you can
 run rapt-file, which calls a remote server to do the searches.


I no longer have the time or interest to improve apt-file, and Thijs is
also only keeping it operational but not doing significant new
development.

The largest task as I see it would be to better integrate some or all of
the transport mechanisms, so that apt-file can behave properly for
different kinds of errors, report up-to-date-ness, etc.  Also better
download progress reporting and bandwith limiting would be nice.  Of
course, there are many other possible improvements that no one had time
to implement, see the open wishlist bugs.

Apt-file is written in perl, so the prospective developer should have
decent perl knowledge. Since Apt-file interprets data received over
unauthenticated methods, being aware of possible security issues is also
necessary.

There is also rapt-file (written by Enrico), which consults a web
service instead of a local database. It is written in python and could
use some improvements, in particular to make it behave more similar to
apt-file.