Basically, I am trying to download all packages that are part of the installation dependencies of a given one into a directory of my choosing to then install packages on an unexposed machine. apt-rdepends nicely lists all dependencies ordered as a depth first graph, but I am getting "pkgcache.bin" and "srcpkgcache.bin" files for all package names.
I found a nice explanation of what seems to be all there is to be known about apt (any other documentation you would recommend?): https://www.juliensobczak.com/inspect/2021/05/15/linux-packages-under-the-hood.html but I don't see an answer to my question. Where are or how do I get the ".deb" package out of those binary files? _DEB_PKG="gimp" _ARCH=$(dpkg --print-architecture) _DT=$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S) _LOG="apt-rdepends_${_DT}_${_DEB_PKG}_${_ARCH}.log" echo "// __ \$_LOG: |${_LOG}|" ### time apt-rdepends "${_DEB_PKG}:${_ARCH}" | grep --extended-regexp '^[a-zA-Z0-9]' | tac > "${_LOG}" 2>&1 ls -l "${_LOG}" wc -l "${_LOG}" _DEB_PKG_2DL=$(head -n 1 "${_LOG}") echo "// __ \$_DEB_PKG_2DL: |${_DEB_PKG_2DL}|" _DL_DIR="$(pwd)/${_DT}/${_DEB_PKG_2DL}" mkdir --parents --verbose "${_DL_DIR}" apt --option APT::Architecture="${_ARCH}" --option Dir::Cache="${_DL_DIR}" download "${_DEB_PKG_2DL}" ls -l "${_DL_DIR}" file "${_DL_DIR}/"*.* // __ $_LOG: |apt-rdepends_20230226170006_gimp_amd64.log| -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 3254 Feb 26 17:00 apt-rdepends_20230226170006_gimp_amd64.log 270 apt-rdepends_20230226170006_gimp_amd64.log // __ $_DEB_PKG_2DL: |xdg-utils| mkdir: created directory '/home/user/20230226170006' mkdir: created directory '/home/user/20230226170006/xdg-utils' Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye/main amd64 xdg-utils all 1.1.3-4.1 [75.5 kB] Fetched 75.5 kB in 1s (143 kB/s) total 67616 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 34678812 Feb 26 17:00 pkgcache.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 34555088 Feb 26 17:00 srcpkgcache.bin /home/user/20230226170006/xdg-utils/pkgcache.bin: APT cache data, version 16.0, little-endian, 97918 packages, 87142 versions /home/user/20230226170006/xdg-utils/srcpkgcache.bin: APT cache data, version 16.0, little-endian, 97917 packages, 87141 versions
