"Amir" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I have downloaded a .deb file and want to examing the source but don't have >the full Debian system installed. > >I was wondering whether: > > a) Is there a utility for Linux/Windows that will allow me to unpack a >.deb file?
According to deb(5), (modern) Debian packages are just ar archives. ar has been around for ever, and should be available for any Unix system; on most Linux systems it'll be in the binutils package. 'ar x package.deb' will unpack a .deb into files called debian-binary, control.tar.gz, and data.tar.gz, and you can then unpack those with something like 'tar xzvf data.tar.gz'. However, if you want the source, you'll need to download the source package files: *.orig.tar.gz, *.diff.gz, and *.dsc for a normal package, *.tar.gz and *.dsc for packages native to Debian. If you have the Debian dpkg-dev package, then you can use 'dpkg-source -x package.dsc' to unpack these; otherwise, use something like: tar xzvf package.orig.tar.gz zcat package.diff.gz | patch -p0 ... or, for native Debian packages, just: tar xzvf package.tar.gz HTH, -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
