Ubuntu Manpages

origtargz

fetch the orig tarball of a Debian package from various sources, and unpack it

origtargz downloads the orig tarball of a Debian package, and optionally unpacks it into the current directory. The version number to be used is determined from debian/changelog. The main use for origtargz is with debian-dir-only repository checkouts. It should be invoked from the top level directory of an unpacked Debian source package.

Various download locations are tried:

  • First, an existing file is looked for.
  • Directories given with --path are searched.
  • pristine-tar is tried.
  • apt-get source is tried when apt-cache showsrc reports a matching version.
  • Finally, uscan --download-current-version is tried.

When asked to unpack the orig tarball, origtargz will remove all files and directories from the current directory, except the debian directory, and the VCS repository directories. Some files outside debian/ which are often stored in VCS even for debian-dir-only repositories are also preserved (.bzr-builddeb, .gitignore, .hgignore). Note that this will drop all non-committed changes for the patch system in use (e.g. source format "3.0 (quilt)"), and will even remove all patches from the package when no patch system is in use (the original "1.0" source format).

The default behavior is to unpack the orig tarball on the first invocation of origtargz in a debian-dir-only checkout.

Despite origtargz being called "targz", it will work with any compression scheme used for the tarball.

A similar tool to unpack orig tarballs is uupdate(1). uupdate creates a new working directory, unpacks the tarball, and applies the Debian .diff.gz changes. In contrast, origtargz uses the current directory, keeping VCS metadata.

For Debian package repositories that keep the full upstream source, other tools should be used to upgrade the repository from the new tarball. See git-import-orig(1) and svn-upgrade(1) for examples. origtargz is still useful for downloading the current tarball.

Add directory to the list of locations to search for an existing tarball. When found, a hardlink is created if possible, otherwise a symlink.
Unpack the downloaded orig tarball to the current directory, replacing everything except the debian directory. Existing files are removed, except for debian/ and VCS files. Preserved are: .bzr, .bzrignore, .bzr-builddeb, .git, .gitignore, .hg, .hgignore, and .svn.
Do not unpack the orig tarball.
If the current directory contains only a debian directory (and possibly some dotfiles), unpack the orig tarball. This is the default behavior.
Always unpack the orig tarball.
Alias for --unpack=no.
When using apt-get source, pass --tar-only to it. The default is to download the full source package including .dsc and .diff.gz or .debian.tar.gz components so debdiff can be used to diff the last upload to the next one. With --tar-only, only download the .orig.tar.* file.
Remove existing files as with --unpack. Note that like --unpack, this will remove upstream files even if they are stored in VCS.

debcheckout(1), git-import-orig(1), pristine-tar(1), svn-upgrade(1), uupdate(1)

origtargz and this manpage have been written by Christoph Berg <myon@debian.org>.