.x Editor

[millpond]

Its my understanding that the .deb packages are in a special .x format that is somewhat uncommonly used.

mc can read it but not edit it.

Is anyone aware of any editors that can manage and EDIT - preferably in place - .deb packages?

[millpond]

Its my understanding that the .deb packages are in a special .x format that is somewhat uncommonly used.

mc can read it but not edit it.

Is anyone aware of any editors that can manage and EDIT - preferably in place - .deb packages?

A .deb package is a tar archive which may or may not be compressed with one of several algorithms. Any GUI extraction tool should be able to get you in there, but if you want to manipulate .deb files, dpkg-deb is what you want. Reading the man page for dpkg-deb should prove helpful.

Hope this helps -

The tar file is compressed. Not obvious using Linux but clear under Win32 FAR. There I can edit within the tar, but not the archiver.

The idea is to script changes to the deb files *en masse* - but I need the versatility of zip,gzip or rar.

[pendrachken]

use the package manager tools provided:

Code: Select all

## off the top of my head it should be something like this, see the man pages... and write a nice script.

dpkg-deb -R my.deb $TMP_FOLDER

$SCRIPT_EDITS

dpkg-deb -b $TMP_FOLDER  updated.deb

Your script should do housekeeping after every deb file you do anything with so you are not adding mare and more junk to the next repackage.