How to list files of a Debian package without install

Question

This command can only list contents of installed packages,

dpkg -L PACKAGENAME

but how to list contents of a non-installed package, to preview/examine the package?

Answer 1

dpkg -c (or --contents) lists the contents of a .deb package file (It is a front-end to dpkg-deb.)

dpkg -c package_file.deb

To work directly with package names rather than package files, you can use apt-file. (You may need to install the apt-file package first.)

sudo apt-file update        
apt-file list package_name

As stated in the first comment, apt-file lists contents for packages in your already-configured Apt repositories. It is irrelevant whether any particular package is or is not installed.

Answer 2

Use --contents instead of -L:

dpkg --contents PACKAGENAME

When used in this manner, dpkg acts as a front-end to dpkg-deb, so use man dpkg-deb to see all the options.

You can also use an archive browser to view the package contents.

Answer 3

dpkg --contents will let you look at the uninstalled package. If the .deb is not on your system yet, do

apt-get --download-only install pkgname

The package will get downloaded to /var/cache/apt/archives but not installed.

Answer 4

The best way would be to browse directly the package repository:

http://packages.debian.org/[distro name]/all/[package name]/filelist

Example:

http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/all/transmission-common/filelist

Answer 5

I took @baldoz's http idea and generalized it for Ubuntu and Debian, added a little sed and wrapped it in a bash function one-liner:

function deb_list () { curl -s $(lsb_release -si | sed -e 's Ubuntu https://packages.ubuntu.com ' -e 's Debian https://packages.debian.org ')/$(lsb_release -sc)/all/$1/filelist | sed -n -e '/<pre>/,/<\/pre>/p' | sed -e 's/<[^>]\+>//g' -e '/^$/d'; }

Usage:

$ deb_list curl
/usr/bin/curl
/usr/share/doc/curl/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/curl/copyright
/usr/share/doc/curl/NEWS.Debian.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/curl.1.gz

Same function on multiple lines:

function deb_list () {
    curl -s $(lsb_release -si \
                | sed -e 's Ubuntu https://packages.ubuntu.com ' \
                      -e 's Debian https://packages.debian.org '
              )/$(lsb_release -sc)/all/$1/filelist \
      | sed -n -e '/<pre>/,/<\/pre>/p' \
      | sed -e 's/<[^>]\+>//g' -e '/^$/d';
}

Explained:

1. lsb_release -si returns "Ubuntu" or "Debian" replace that with the base url https://packages.ubuntu.com or https://packages.debian.org
2. lsb_Release -sc returns the codename (e.g. "trusty", "sid", etc) use that to build the full URL: https://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/all/curl/filelist
3. Fetch that URL with curl and pipe the html through three sed commands. First captures only the file list (what's between <pre> and </pre> tags); second strips out any html tags; third removes any blank lines.

Note: It doesn't search PPAs, alternate apt sources repos and only queries official packages available for the release of debian/ubuntu you are running.

Answer 6

For all those people who might still googling this issue at Jan 2017, you can have some cool stuff with recent versions of apt and dpkg in Debian 8.5 without downloading anything.

List Contents of Deb File Without Download:

First locate the full url of the deb file :

root@debian:apt-get --print-uris download yade
'http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/pool/main/y/yade/yade_2016.06a-7_amd64.deb' yade_2016.06a-7_amd64.deb 1621148 SHA256:26c0d84484a92ae9c2828edaa63243eb764378d79191149970926aa3ec40cdd4

PS: --print-uris switch prints the url of deb package but deb is not downloaded.

Then display contents of deb package without downloading it:

root@debian:curl -sL -o- "http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/pool/main/y/yade/yade_2016.06a-7_amd64.deb" |dpkg-deb -c /dev/stdin
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-12-10 22:18 ./
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-12-10 22:18 ./usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2016-12-10 22:18 ./usr/bin/
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     13184 2016-12-10 22:18 ./usr/bin/yade
.........................more files listed bellow ......................

PS: Same result can be achieved with

root@debian:dpkg -c <(curl -sL -o- "http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/pool/main/y/yade/yade_2016.06a-7_amd64.deb")

Extract a file from the above deb package , without download.
For example we want to read man page of package yade without installing this package and without even downloading the deb package.

Filename of man page inside deb package as advised by dpkg -c is ./usr/share/man/man1/yade.1.gz

To read man page on the fly:

root@debian:curl -sL -o- "http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/pool/main/y/yade/yade_2016.06a-7_amd64.deb" |dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile /dev/stdin |tar -xO ./usr/share/man/man1/yade.1.gz |man /dev/stdin

man page is displayed correctly using man application.

PS: Above pipes does not work with ar command.

root@debian:apt --version --> apt 1.4~beta2 (amd64)
root@debian:dpkg --version --> Debian 'dpkg' package management program version 1.18.18 (amd64).
root@debian:man --version --> man 2.7.6.1
root@debian:tar --version --> tar (GNU tar) 1.29

Answer 7

Try:

apt-get download packages-name
dpkg --contents *.deb

Answer 8

Seems it's not possible before installing it first or extracting the list from .deb file.

Try the following command:

dpkg --contents <(curl -s $(apt-get install --yes --no-download --reinstall --print-uris language-pack-en | tail -n1 | grep -o "http[^']\+"))

Change language-pack-en with your package name.

It basically reads .deb file extracted via curl and run dpkg --contents FILE on it.

---

You can also check the content without downloading the package file.

So if you know the URL of .deb file, the following shell command will list all the package files:

dpkg -c <(curl -sL "http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/pool/main/a/avis/avis_1.2.2-4_all.deb")

^{Curl params: -s - silent, -L - follow moved links.}

If you don't know the URL, fetch by: apt --print-uris, e.g.

apt --print-uris install avis | grep avis