Ubuntu Manpage: dpkg-deb - Debian package archive (.deb) manipulation tool

NAME

       dpkg-deb - Debian package archive (.deb) manipulation tool

SYNOPSIS

       dpkg-deb [option...] command

DESCRIPTION

       dpkg-deb packs, unpacks and provides information about Debian archives.

       Use dpkg to install and remove packages from your system.

       You can also invoke dpkg-deb by calling dpkg with whatever options you want to pass to dpkg-deb. dpkg
       will spot that you wanted dpkg-deb and run it for you.

       For most commands taking an input archive argument, the archive can be read from standard input if the
       archive name is given as a single minus character («-»); otherwise lack of support will be documented in
       their respective command description.

COMMANDS

       -b, --build binary-directory [archive|directory]
           Creates  a  debian archive from the filesystem tree stored in binary-directory. binary-directory must
           have a DEBIAN subdirectory, which contains the control information files such  as  the  control  file
           itself.  This  directory  will not appear in the binary package's filesystem archive, but instead the
           files in it will be put in the binary package's control information area.

           Unless you specify --nocheck, dpkg-deb will read DEBIAN/control and parse it. It will check the  file
           for  syntax errors and other problems, and display the name of the binary package being built.  dpkg-
           deb will also check the permissions of the maintainer scripts and other files  found  in  the  DEBIAN
           control information directory.

           If no archive is specified then dpkg-deb will write the package into the file binary-directory.deb.

           If the archive to be created already exists it will be overwritten.

           If    the   second   argument   is   a   directory   then   dpkg-deb   will   write   to   the   file
           directory/package_version_arch.deb.  When a target directory is specified, rather than  a  file,  the
           --nocheck  option may not be used (since dpkg-deb needs to read and parse the package control file to
           determine which filename to use).

       -I, --info archive [control-file-name...]
           Provides information about a binary package archive.

           If no control-file-names are specified then it will print a summary of the contents of the package as
           well as its control file.

           If any control-file-names are specified then  dpkg-deb  will  print  them  in  the  order  they  were
           specified;  if  any  of the components weren't present it will print an error message to stderr about
           each one and exit with status 2.

       -W, --show archive
           Provides information about a binary package archive in  the  format  specified  by  the  --showformat
           argument.  The  default  format  displays  the package's name and version on one line, separated by a
           tabulator.

       -f, --field archive [control-field-name...]
           Extracts control file information from a binary package archive.

           If no control-field-names are specified then it will print the whole control file.

           If any are specified then dpkg-deb will print their contents, in the order in which  they  appear  in
           the  control  file.  If more than one control-field-name is specified then dpkg-deb will precede each
           with its field name (and a colon and space).

           No errors are reported for fields requested but not found.

       -c, --contents archive
           Lists the contents of the filesystem tree archive portion of the package  archive.  It  is  currently
           produced in the format generated by tar's verbose listing.

       -x, --extract archive directory
           Extracts the filesystem tree from a package archive into the specified directory.

           Note  that  extracting a package to the root directory will not result in a correct installation! Use
           dpkg to install packages.

           directory (but not its parents) will be created if necessary, and its permissions modified  to  match
           the contents of the package.

       -X, --vextract archive directory
           Is like --extract (-x) with --verbose (-v) which prints a listing of the files extracted as it goes.

       -R, --raw-extract archive directory
           Extracts  the  filesystem  tree  from  a  package archive into a specified directory, and the control
           information files into a DEBIAN subdirectory of the specified directory (since dpkg 1.16.1).

           The target directory (but not its parents) will be created if necessary.

           The input archive is not (currently) processed sequentially, so reading it from standard input  («-»)
           is not supported.

       --ctrl-tarfile archive
           Extracts  the control data from a binary package and sends it to standard output in tar format (since
           dpkg 1.17.14). Together with tar(1) this can be used to extract a  particular  control  file  from  a
           package archive.  The input archive will always be processed sequentially.

       --fsys-tarfile archive
           Extracts  the  filesystem  tree  data  from  a  binary package and sends it to standard output in tar
           format. Together with tar(1) this can be used to extract a particular file from  a  package  archive.
           The input archive will always be processed sequentially.

       -e, --control archive [directory]
           Extracts the control information files from a package archive into the specified directory.

           If no directory is specified then a subdirectory DEBIAN in the current directory is used.

           The target directory (but not its parents) will be created if necessary.

       -?, --help
           Show the usage message and exit.

       --version
           Show the version and exit.

OPTIONS

--showformat=format
This option is used to specify the format of the output --show will produce. The format is a string
that will be output for each package listed.

The string may reference any status field using the “${field-name}” form, a list of the valid fields
can be easily produced using -I on the same package. A complete explanation of the formatting options
(including escape sequences and field tabbing) can be found in the explanation of the --showformat
option in dpkg-query(1).

The default for this field is “${Package}\t${Version}\n”.

-zcompress-level
Specify which compression level to use on the compressor backend, when building a package (default is
9 for gzip, 6 for xz and 19 for zstd). The accepted values are 0-9 with: 0 being mapped to
compressor none for gzip. Before dpkg 1.16.2 level 0 was equivalent to compressor none for all
compressors.

-Scompress-strategy
Specify which compression strategy to use on the compressor backend, when building a package (since
dpkg 1.16.2). Allowed values are none (since dpkg 1.16.4), filtered, huffman, rle and fixed for gzip
(since dpkg 1.17.0) and extreme for xz.

-Zcompress-type
Specify which compression type to use when building a package. Allowed values are gzip, xz (since
dpkg 1.15.6), zstd (since dpkg 1.19.0.5ubuntu2) and none (default is zstd).

--[no-]uniform-compression
Specify that the same compression parameters should be used for all archive members (i.e. control.tar
and data.tar; since dpkg 1.17.6). Otherwise only the data.tar member will use those parameters. The
only supported compression types allowed to be uniformly used are none, gzip, xz and zstd. The
--no-uniform-compression option disables uniform compression (since dpkg 1.19.0). Uniform
compression is the default (since dpkg 1.19.0).

--root-owner-group
Set the owner and group for each entry in the filesystem tree data to root with id 0 (since dpkg
1.19.0).

Note: This option can be useful for rootless builds (see rootless-builds.txt), but should not be used
when the entries have an owner or group that is not root. Support for these will be added later in
the form of a meta manifest.

--deb-format=format
Set the archive format version used when building (since dpkg 1.17.0). Allowed values are 2.0 for
the new format, and 0.939000 for the old one (default is 2.0).

The old archive format is less easily parsed by non-Debian tools and is now obsolete; its only use is
when building packages to be parsed by versions of dpkg older than 0.93.76 (September 1995), which
was released as i386 a.out only.

--nocheck
Inhibits dpkg-deb --build's usual checks on the proposed contents of an archive. You can build any
archive you want, no matter how broken, this way.

-v, --verbose
Enables verbose output (since dpkg 1.16.1). This currently only affects --extract making it behave
like --vextract.

-D, --debug
Enables debugging output. This is not very interesting.

EXIT STATUS

       0   The requested action was successfully performed.

       2   Fatal or unrecoverable error due to invalid command-line usage, or interactions with the system, such
           as accesses to the database, memory allocations, etc.

ENVIRONMENT

       DPKG_COLORS
           Sets the color mode (since dpkg 1.18.5).  The currently accepted values are: auto  (default),  always
           and never.

       TMPDIR
           If set, dpkg-deb will use it as the directory in which to create temporary files and directories.

       SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
           If set, it will be used as the timestamp (as seconds since the epoch) in the deb(5)'s ar(5) container
           and used to clamp the mtime in the tar(5) file entries.

NOTES

       Do  not attempt to use just dpkg-deb to install software! You must use dpkg proper to ensure that all the
       files are correctly placed and the package's scripts run and its status and contents recorded.

BUGS

       dpkg-deb -I package1.deb package2.deb does the wrong thing.

       There is no authentication on .deb files; in fact, there isn't even a straightforward checksum.   (Higher
       level  tools  like  APT  support authenticating .deb packages retrieved from a given repository, and most
       packages nowadays provide an md5sum control file generated by debian/rules. Though this is  not  directly
       supported by the lower level tools.)