dpkg-repack1

Usage

Overview

dpkg-repack creates a .deb file out of a Debian package that has already been installed on your system.

If any changes have been made to the package while it was unpacked (e.g. conffiles files in /etc modified), the new package will inherit the changes. (There are exceptions to this, including changes to configuration files that are not conffiles, including those managed by ucf(1).)

This utility can make it easy to copy packages from one computer to another, or to recreate packages that are installed on your system, but no longer available elsewhere.

Note: dpkg-repack will place the created package in the current directory.

Options

--root=dir

Take package from filesystem rooted on dir. This is useful if, for example, you have another computer NFS mounted on /mnt, then you can use --root=/mnt to reassemble packages from that computer.

--arch=architecture

Make the package be for a specific architecture. dpkg-repack might not be able to tell if an installed package is architecture all or is specific to the system's architecture, in case it lacks the Architecture field. If you know the package architecture, you can use this option to force dpkg-repack to use the right architecture.

-d, --deb-option=option

Pass option as build argument to dpkg-deb. This option can be specified multiple times.

--generate

Generate a temporary directory suitable for building a package from, but do not actually create the package. This is useful if you want to move files around in the package before building it. The package can be built from this temporary directory by running "dpkg-deb --build dir ." as root (or by using fakeroot -u), where dir is the generated directory.

--tag=thing[,...]

Specify a comma-separated list of things to tag in the package as having been repackaged. The current list of things to tag is:

none

Tag nothing. This can be specified first to be augmented by more specific things.

description

Append a timestamped "Repackaged by dpkg-repack" tagline to the package's control file Description field. This tag is enabled by default.

version

Append a "+repack" tag to the package version.

all

Tag everything.

package-name

The name of the package to attempt to repack. Multiple packages can be listed.