debcheckout

DEBCHECKOUT(1)                                                  DEBCHECKOUT(1)

NAME
       debcheckout - checkout the development repository of a Debian package

SYNOPSIS
       debcheckout [OPTIONS] PACKAGE [DESTDIR]
       debcheckout [OPTIONS] REPOSITORY_URL [DESTDIR]
       debcheckout --help

DESCRIPTION
       debcheckout retrieves the information about the Version Control System
       used to maintain a given Debian package (the PACKAGE argument), and
       then checks out the latest (potentially unreleased) version of the
       package from its repository.  By default the repository is checked out
       to the PACKAGE directory; this can be overridden by providing the
       DESTDIR argument.

       The information about where the repository is available is expected to
       be found in Vcs-* fields available in the source package record. For
       example, the vim package exposes such information with a field like
       Vcs-Hg:http://hg.debian.org/hg/pkg-vim/vim, you can see it by grepping
       through apt-cache showsrc vim.

       If more than one source package record containing Vcs-* fields is
       available, debcheckout will select the record with the highest version
       number.  Alternatively, a particular version may be selected from those
       available by specifying the package name as PACKAGE=VERSION.

       If you already know the URL of a given repository you can invoke
       debcheckout directly on it, but you will probably need to pass the
       appropriate -t flag. That is, some heuristics are in use to guess the
       repository type from the URL; if they fail, you might want to override
       the guessed type using -t.

       The currently supported version control systems are: Arch (arch),
       Bazaar (bzr), CVS (cvs), Darcs (darcs), Git (git), Mercurial (hg) and
       Subversion (svn).

OPTIONS
       GENERAL OPTIONS

       -a, --auth
           Work in authenticated mode; this means that for known repositories
           (mainly those hosted on https://salsa.debian.org) URL rewriting is
           attempted before checking out, to ensure that the repository can be
           committed to. For example, for Git repositories hosted on Salsa
           this means that git@salsa.debian.org:...git will be used instead of
           https://salsa.debian.org/...git.

           There are built-in rules for salsa.debian.org, alioth.debian.org
           and github.com. Other hosts can be configured using
           DEBCHECKOUT_AUTH_URLS.

       -d, --details
           Only print a list of detailed information about the package
           repository, without checking it out; the output format is a list of
           fields, each field being a pair of TAB-separated field name and
           field value. The actual fields depend on the repository type. This
           action might require a network connection to the remote repository.

           Also see -p. This option and -p are mutually exclusive.

       -h, --help
           Print a detailed help message and exit.

       -p, --print
           Only print a summary about package repository information, without
           checking it out; the output format is TAB-separated with two
           fields: repository type, repository URL. This action works offline,
           it only uses "static" information as known by APT's cache.

           Also see -d. This option and -d are mutually exclusive.

       -P package, --package package
           When checking out a repository URL, instead of trying to guess the
           package name from the URL, use this package name.

       -t TYPE, --type TYPE
           Override the repository type (which defaults to some heuristics
           based on the URL or, in case of heuristic failure, the fallback
           "git"); should be one of the currently supported repository types.

       -u USERNAME, --user USERNAME
           Specify the login name to be used in authenticated mode (see -a).
           This option implies -a: you don't need to specify both.

       -f FILE, --file FILE
           Specify that the named file should be extracted from the repository
           and placed in the destination directory. May be used more than once
           to extract multiple files.

       --source=never|auto|download-only|always
           Some packages only place the debian directory in version control.
           debcheckout can retrieve the remaining parts of the source using
           apt-get source and move the files into the checkout.

           never
               Only use the repository.

           auto (default)
               If the repository only contains the debian directory, retrieve
               the source package, unpack it, and also place the .orig.tar.gz
               file into the current directory. Else, do nothing.

           download-only
               Always retrieve the .orig.tar.gz file, but do not unpack it.

           always
               Always retrieve the .orig.tar.gz file, and if the repository
               only contains the debian directory, unpack it.

       VCS-SPECIFIC OPTIONS

       GIT-SPECIFIC OPTIONS

       --git-track BRANCHES
           Specify a list of remote branches which will be set up for tracking
           (as in gitbranch--track, see git-branch(1)) after the remote Git
           repository has been cloned. The list should be given as a space-
           separated list of branch names.

           As a shorthand, the string "*" can be given to require tracking of
           all remote branches.

CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
       The two configuration files /etc/devscripts.conf and ~/.devscripts are
       sourced by a shell in that order to set configuration variables.
       Command line options can be used to override configuration file
       settings. Environment variable settings are ignored for this purpose.
       The currently recognised variables are:

       DEBCHECKOUT_AUTH_URLS
           This variable should be a space separated list of Perl regular
           expressions and replacement texts, which must come in pairs: REGEXP
           TEXT REGEXP TEXT ... and so on. Each pair denotes a substitution
           which is applied to repository URLs if other built-in means of
           building URLs for authenticated mode (see -a) have failed.

           References to matching substrings in the replacement texts are
           allowed as usual in Perl by the means of $1, $2, ... and so on.

           This setting is used to configure the "authenticated mode" location
           for repositories. The Debian repositories on salsa.debian.org are
           implicitly defined, as is github.com.

           Here is a sample snippet suitable for the configuration files:

            DEBCHECKOUT_AUTH_URLS='
             ^\w+://(svn\.example\.com)/(.*)    svn+ssh://$1/srv/svn/$2
             ^\w+://(git\.example\.com)/(.*)    git+ssh://$1/home/git/$2
            '

           Note that whitespace is not allowed in either regexps or
           replacement texts. Also, given that configuration files are sourced
           by a shell, you probably want to use single quotes around the value
           of this variable.

       DEBCHECKOUT_SOURCE
           This variable determines under what scenarios the associated
           orig.tar.gz for a package will be downloaded.  See the --source
           option for a description of the values.

       DEBCHECKOUT_USER
           This variable sets the username for authenticated mode. It can be
           overridden with the --user option. Setting this variable does not
           imply the use of authenticated mode, it still has to be activated
           with --auth.

SEE ALSO
       apt-cache(8), Section 6.2.5 of the Debian Developer's Reference (for
       more information about Vcs-* fields):
       https://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/best-pkging-practices.html#bpp-vcs.

AUTHOR
       debcheckout and this manpage have been written by Stefano Zacchiroli
       <zack@debian.org>.

Debian Utilities                  2020-02-13                    DEBCHECKOUT(1)