Provided by: devscripts_2.24.1_all 
NAME
devscripts - scripts to ease the lives of Debian developers
DESCRIPTION
The devscripts package provides a collection of scripts which may be of use to Debian
developers and others wishing to build Debian packages. For a summary of the available
scripts, please see the file /usr/share/doc/devscripts/README.gz, and for full details,
please see the individual manpages. They are contributed by multiple developers; for
details of the authors, please see the code or manpages.
Also, the directory /usr/share/doc/devscripts/examples contains an example exim script for
sorting mail arriving to Debian mailing lists.
ENVIRONMENT
Several scripts of the devscripts suite use the following environment variables. Check the
man pages of individual scripts for more details on how the variables are used.
DEBEMAIL
Email of the person acting on a given Debian package via devscripts.
DEBFULLNAME
Full name (first + family) of the person acting on a given Debian package via
devscripts.
SCRIPTS
Here is the complete list of available devscripts. See their man pages for additional
documentation.
annotate-output(1)
run a command and prepend time and stream (O for stdout, E for stderr) for every
line of output.
archpath(1)
Prints arch (tla/Bazaar 1.x) package names. Also supports calculating the package
names for other branches. [tla]
bts(1) A command-line tool for accessing the Debian Bug Tracking System, both to send
mails to control@bts.debian.org and to access the web pages and SOAP interface of
the BTS. [www-browser, libauthen-sasl-perl, libsoap-lite-perl, liburi-perl, libwww-
perl, bsd-mailx | mailx]
build-rdeps(1)
Searches for all packages that build-depend on a given package. [dctrl-tools, dose-
extra, libdpkg-perl]
chdist(1)
tool to easily play with several distributions. [dctrl-tools]
checkbashisms(1)
check whether a /bin/sh script contains any common bash-specific constructs.
cowpoke(1)
upload a Debian source package to a cowbuilder host and build it, optionally also
signing and uploading the result to an incoming queue. [ssh-client]
cvs-debi, cvs-debc(1)
wrappers around debi and debc respectively (see below) which allow them to be
called from the CVS working directory. [cvs-buildpackage]
cvs-debrelease(1)
wrapper around debrelease which allows it to be called from the CVS working
directory. [cvs-buildpackage, dupload | dput, ssh-client]
cvs-debuild(1)
A wrapper for cvs-buildpackage to use debuild as its package building program.
[cvs-buildpackage, lintian, gnupg |gnupg2]
dcmd(1)
run a given command replacing the name of a .changes or .dsc file with each of the
files referenced therein. *
dd-list(1)
given a list of packages, pretty-print it ordered by maintainer. *
debbisect(1)
bisect snapshot.debian.org to find which change in the archive introduced a certain
problem. [debvm, mmdebstrap, python3-debian]
debc(1)
List contents of current package. Do this after a successful "debuild" to see if
the package looks all right.
debchange (abbreviation dch)(1)
Modifies debian/changelog and manages version numbers for you. It will either
increment the version number or add an entry for the current version, depending
upon the options given to it. [libdistro-info-perl, libsoap-lite-perl]*
debcheckout(1)
checkout the development repository of a Debian package. *
debclean(1)
Clean a Debian source tree. Debclean will clean all Debian source trees below the
current directory, and if requested, also remove all files that were generated from
these source trees (that is .deb, .dsc and .changes files). It will keep the
.diffs and original files, though, so that the binaries and other files can be
rebuilt if necessary. *
debcommit(1)
Commits changes to cvs, darcs, svn, svk, tla, bzr, git, or hg, using new entries in
debian/changelog as the commit message. Also supports tagging Debian package
releases. [cvs | darcs | subversion | svk | tla | bzr | git-core | mercurial,
libtimedate-perl]
debdiff(1)
A program which examines two .deb files or two .changes files and reports on any
difference found in their file lists. Useful for ensuring that no files were
inadvertently lost between versions. Can also examine two .dsc files and report on
the changes between source versions. For a deeper comparison one can use the
diffoscope package. [wdiff, patchutils]*
debdiff-apply(1)
Apply unified diffs of two Debian source packages, such as those generated by
debdiff, to a target Debian source package. Any changes to debian/changelog are
dealt with specially, to avoid the conflicts that changelog diffs typically produce
when applied naively. May be used to check that old patches still apply to newer
versions of those packages. [python3-debian, python3-unidiff, quilt]
debi(1)
Installs the current package by using dpkg. It assumes that the current package
has just been built (for example by debuild), and the .deb lives in the parent
directory, and will effectively run dpkg -i on the .deb. The ability to install the
package with a very short command is very useful when troubleshooting packages.
debootsnap(1)
Combines debootstrap and snapshot.debian.org to create a chroot containing exactly
the requested selection of packages. This can be used to re-create a chroot from
the past, for example to reproduce a bug. The tool is also used by debrebuild to
build a package in a chroot with build dependencies in the same version as recorded
in the buildinfo file. [apt-utils, equivs, mmdebstrap, python3-debian,
python3-pycurl, python3-requests]
debrelease(1)
A wrapper around dupload or dput which figures out which version to upload, and
then calls dupload or dput to actually perform the upload. [dupload | dput, ssh-
client]
debrebuild(1)
A script that provided a .buildinfo file reports the instructions on how to try to
reproduce the reported build. [sbuild | mmdebstrap, python3-pycurl, libdpkg-perl]
debrepro(1)
A script that tests reproducibility of Debian packages. It will build a given
source directory twice, with a set of variation between the first and second build,
and compare the binary packages produced. If diffoscope is installed, it is used to
compare non-matching binaries. If disorderfs is installed, it is used during the
build to inject non-determinism in filesystem listing operations. [faketime,
diffoscope, disorderfs]
debrsign(1)
This transfers a .changes/.dsc pair to a remote machine for signing, and runs
debsign on the remote machine over an SSH connection. [gnupg | gnupg2, debian-
keyring, ssh-client]
debsign(1)
Use GNU Privacy Guard to sign the changes (and possibly dsc) files created by
running dpkg-buildpackage with no-sign options. Useful if you are building a
package on a remote machine and wish to sign it on a local one. This script is
capable of automatically downloading the .changes and .dsc files from a remote
machine. [gnupg |gnupg2, debian-keyring, ssh-client]*
debsnap(1)
grab packages from https://snapshot.debian.org [libwww-perl, libjson-perl]
debuild(1)
A wrapper for building a package (i.e., dpkg-buildpackage) to avoid problems with
insufficient permissions and wrong paths etc. Debuild will set up the proper
environment for building a package. Debuild will also run lintian to check that the
package does not have any major policy violations. [lintian, gnupg | gnupg2]*
deb-janitor(1)
command-line client for interacting with the Debian Janitor.
deb-reversion(1)
increases a binary package version number and repacks the package, useful for
porters and the like.
deb-why-removed(1)
shows the reason a package was removed from the archive. [libdpkg-perl]
deb2apptainer(1)
build a Singularity/Apptainer image with given Debian packages.
deb2docker(1)
build a docker image with given Debian packages. [docker.io]
dep3changelog(1)
generate a changelog entry from a DEP3-style patch header.
desktop2menu(1)
given a freedesktop.org desktop file, generate a skeleton for a menu file.
[libfile-desktopentry-perl]
dget(1)
Downloads Debian source and binary packages. Point at a .changes or .dsc to
download all references files. Specify a package name to download it from the
configured apt repository. [wget | curl]
diff2patches(1)
extracts patches from a .diff.gz file placing them under debian/ or, if present,
debian/patches. [patchutils]
dpkg-depcheck, dpkg-genbuilddeps(1)
Runs a specified command (such as debian/rules build) or dpkg-buildpackage,
respectively, to determine the packages used during the build process. This
information can be helpful when trying to determine the packages needed in the
Build-Depends etc. lines in the debian/control file. [build-essential, strace]
dscextract(1)
extract a single file from a Debian source package. [patchutils]
dscverify(1)
check the signature and MD5 sums of a dsc file against the most current Debian
keyring on your system. [gnupg | gnupg2, debian-keyring]
edit-patch(1)
add/edit a patch for a source package and commit the changes. [quilt | dpatch |
cdbs]
getbuildlog(1)
download package build logs from Debian auto-builders. [wget]
git-deborig(1)
try to produce Debian orig.tar using git-archive(1). [libdpkg-perl, libgit-wrapper-
perl, liblist-compare-perl, libstring-shellquote-perl, libtry-tiny-perl]
grep-excuses(1)
grep britney's excuses to find out what is happening to your packages. [libdbd-pg-
perl, libterm-size-perl, libyaml-syck-perl, wget, w3m]
hardening-check(1)
report the hardening characteristics of a set of binaries.
list-unreleased(1)
searches for packages marked UNRELEASED in their changelog.
ltnu (Long Time No Upload)(1)
List all uploads of packages by the given uploader or maintainer and display them
ordered by the last upload of that package, oldest uploads first.
manpage-alert(1)
locate binaries without corresponding manpages. [man-db]
mass-bug(1)
mass-file bug reports. [bsd-mailx | mailx]
mergechanges(1)
merge .changes files from the same release but built on different architectures.
mk-build-deps(1)
Given a package name and/or control file, generate a binary package which may be
installed to satisfy the build-dependencies of the given package. [equivs]
mk-origtargz(1)
Rename upstream tarball, optionally changing the compression and removing unwanted
files. [libfile-which-perl, unzip, xz-utils, file]
namecheck(1)
Check project names are not already taken.
nmudiff(1)
prepare a diff of this version (presumably an NMU against the previously released
version (as per the changelog) and submit the diff to the BTS. [patchutils, mutt]
origtargz(1)
fetch the orig tarball of a Debian package from various sources, and unpack it.
[pristine-tar, pristine-lfs]
plotchangelog(1)
display information from a changelog graphically using gnuplot. [libtimedate-perl,
gnuplot]
pts-subscribe(1)
subscribe to the PTS (Package Tracking System) for a limited period of time. [bsd-
mailx | mailx, at]
rc-alert(1)
list installed packages which have release-critical bugs. [wget | curl]
reproducible-check(1)
reports on the reproducible status of installed packages. For more details please
see <https://reproducible-builds.org>.
rmadison(1)
remotely query the Debian archive database about packages. [liburi-perl, wget |
curl]
sadt(1)
run DEP-8 tests. [python3-debian, autodep8]
salsa(1)
manipulates salsa.debian.org repositories and users [libgitlab-api-v4-perl]
suspicious-source(1)
output a list of files which are not common source files. [python3-magic]
svnpath(1)
Prints the path to the Subversion repository of a Subversion checkout. Also
supports calculating the paths for branches and tags in a repository independent
fashion. Used by debcommit to generate svn tags. [subversion]
tagpending(1)
runs from a Debian source tree and tags bugs that are to be closed in the latest
changelog as pending. [libsoap-lite-perl]
transition-check(1)
Check a list of source packages for involvement in transitions for which uploads to
unstable are currently blocked. [libwww-perl, libyaml-syck-perl]
uscan(1)
Automatically scan for and download upstream updates. Uscan can also call a
program such as uupdate to attempt to update the Debianised version based on the
new update. Whilst uscan could be used to release the updated version
automatically, it is probably better not to without testing it first. Uscan can
also verify detached OpenPGP signatures if upstream's signing key is known. [file,
gpgv | gpgv2, gnupg | gnupg2, libfile-dirlist-perl, libfile-touch-perl, libfile-
which-perl, liblwp-protocol-https-perl, libmoo-perl, libwww-perl, unzip, xz-utils]*
uupdate(1)
Update the package with an archive or patches from an upstream author. This will
be of help if you have to update your package. It will try to apply the latest
diffs to your package and tell you how successful it was. [patch]
what-patch(1)
determine what patch system, if any, a source package is using. [patchutils]
whodepends(1)
check which maintainers' packages depend on a package.
who-permits-upload(1)
Retrieve information about Debian Maintainer access control lists. [gnupg | gnupg2,
libencode-locale-perl, libwww-perl, debian-keyring]
who-uploads(1)
determine the most recent uploaders of a package to the Debian archive. [gnupg |
gnupg2, debian-keyring, debian-maintainers, wget]
wnpp-alert(1)
list installed packages which are orphaned or up for adoption. [wget | curl]
wnpp-check(1)
check whether there is an open request for packaging or intention to package bug
for a package. [wget | curl]
wrap-and-sort(1)
wrap long lines and sort items in packaging files. [python3-debian]