NAME
dctrl2xml - Debian control data to XML converter
SYNOPSIS
dctrl2xml [-f FILE | ]
DESCRIPTION
dctrl2xml is a tool that converts Debian control data into an XML
representation. It can be used to convert data which is normally found
in debian/control, .changes, .dsc, Packages, Sources, and similar files
to XML.
For most fields dctrl2xml just uses the field name as element name and
the field data as element content. For other fields, such as package
interrelationship fields (Depends, Build-Depends, etc.) or the Files
field in .changes or Sources files, dctrl2xml additionally parses their
field data to represent it in a more fine-structured form.
OPTIONS
For a full summary of options, run dctrl2xml --help.
--version
Show dctrl2xml’s version number.
-h, --help
Show help about options.
-f FILE, --file=FILE
Read Debian control data from file FILE instead of standard
input. FILE can be either a plain text file or a gzip, bzip2 or
ZIP file.
EXAMPLES
dctrl2xml -f /var/lib/dpkg/available
Convert the whole dpkg(1) available file to XML and print it to
standard output. This is a typical stress test for dctrl2xml.
apt-cache show hello build-essential | dctrl2xml
Convert the package records of the hello and build-essential
packages to XML and print it to standard output. This is an
example of how dctrl2xml can be used in pipes where it reads the
control data from standard input.
apt-cache showsrc hello | dctrl2xml | xmllint --format -
This is similar to the above example, except that the xmllint(1)
tool (which is in the libxml2-utils Debian package) is used to
reformat and reindent dctrl2xml’s output to make it more human
readable and that the source package records of the hello
package are used.
SEE ALSO
deb-control(5)
AUTHOR
Written by Frank S. Thomas <fst@debian.org>.
22 January 2008 dctrl2xml(1)