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 it 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.

ENVIRONMENT

       TMPDIR If set, dpkg-deb will use it as the directory in which to create temporary files and directories.

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).