dpkg-deb

dpkg-deb(1)                       dpkg suite                       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 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.)

SEE ALSO
       deb(5), deb-control(5), dpkg(1), dselect(1).

1.21.1                            2024-02-23                       dpkg-deb(1)