dpkg-deb(1)
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 directory [archive|directory]
Creates a debian archive from the filesystem tree stored in
directory. 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 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 package_version_arch.deb, or package_version.deb if
no Architecture field is present in the package control file.
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 and
bzip2, 6 for xz and lzma). The accepted values are 0-9 with: 0
being mapped to compressor none for gzip and 0 mapped to 1 for
bzip2. 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), bzip2
(deprecated), lzma (since dpkg 1.14.0; deprecated), and none
(default is xz).
--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 and xz.
--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.
--new This is a legacy alias for --deb-format=2.0.
--old This is a legacy alias for --deb-format=0.939000.
--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
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.)
SEE ALSO
deb(5), deb-control(5), dpkg(1), dselect(1).
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