HOWTO: Easily modify dependencies of a .deb file

[Loevborg]

Save the following script as "videbcontrol", chmod +x it and put it in your path. Then by calling:


videbcontrol foo.deb


you can edit the "Depends:" line. The resulting .deb file is written to foo.modified.deb in the current directory.


#!/bin/bash

if [[ -z "$1" ]]; then
echo "Syntax: $0 debfile"
exit 1
fi

DEBFILE="$1"
TMPDIR=`mktemp -d /tmp/deb.XXXXXXXXXX` || exit 1
OUTPUT=`basename "$DEBFILE" .deb`.modfied.deb

if [[ -e "$OUTPUT" ]]; then
echo "$OUTPUT exists."
rm -r "$TMPDIR"
exit 1
fi

dpkg-deb -x "$DEBFILE" "$TMPDIR"
dpkg-deb --control "$DEBFILE" "$TMPDIR"/DEBIAN

if [[ ! -e "$TMPDIR"/DEBIAN/control ]]; then
echo DEBIAN/control not found.

rm -r "$TMPDIR"
exit 1
fi

CONTROL="$TMPDIR"/DEBIAN/control

MOD=`stat -c "%y" "$CONTROL"`
vi "$CONTROL"

if [[ "$MOD" == `stat -c "%y" "$CONTROL"` ]]; then
echo Not modfied.
else
echo Building new deb...
dpkg -b "$TMPDIR" "$OUTPUT"
fi

rm -r "$TMPDIR"


PS: Thanks to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=110458

[K.Mandla]

Moved to Packaging and Compiling Programs.

[tears.of.angels]

thanks! this is exactly what i've been looking for.

i've been using ruby-ripper (i think i got the deb from getdeb.net) and one of the dependencies is gedit while i'm using medit. changing this allowed me to get rid of gedit!

[motin]

Thanks a million! This made it dead easy to get the debian liblinuxsampler package to install successfully in Ubuntu (where libgig is called libgig6 for some reason).

I modified it slightly to make it easier to use another editor than vi:
Also, I prefer to call it edit-deb-control.sh...

#!/bin/bash

EDITOR=gedit

if [[ -z "$1" ]]; then
echo "Syntax: $0 debfile"
exit 1
fi

DEBFILE="$1"
TMPDIR=`mktemp -d /tmp/deb.XXXXXXXXXX` || exit 1
OUTPUT=`basename "$DEBFILE" .deb`.modfied.deb

if [[ -e "$OUTPUT" ]]; then
echo "$OUTPUT exists."
rm -r "$TMPDIR"
exit 1
fi

dpkg-deb -x "$DEBFILE" "$TMPDIR"
dpkg-deb --control "$DEBFILE" "$TMPDIR"/DEBIAN

if [[ ! -e "$TMPDIR"/DEBIAN/control ]]; then
echo DEBIAN/control not found.

rm -r "$TMPDIR"
exit 1
fi

CONTROL="$TMPDIR"/DEBIAN/control

MOD=`stat -c "%y" "$CONTROL"`
$EDITOR "$CONTROL"

if [[ "$MOD" == `stat -c "%y" "$CONTROL"` ]]; then
echo Not modfied.
else
echo Building new deb...
dpkg -b "$TMPDIR" "$OUTPUT"
fi

rm -r "$TMPDIR"

[Pablo12]

This script rocks!! What else can I say, many thanks.

[23dornot23d]

Nice well written script .... I like it ..... ty ..... ;)

[fluffnik]

Many thanks!

My version is called "nanodebcontrol" :)

[Losergamer04]

I just wanted to say thanks!

[Danielaus]

Thanx guys!! Great script!
I just needed it to edit a deb from a ppa with a typo in the dependencies!
YEAH! ;)

I also edited motin version to create the deb file in the current directory and using the name-version from the control file

#!/bin/bash

EDITOR=nano

if [[ -z "$1" ]]; then
echo "Syntax: $0 debfile"
exit 1
fi

DEBFILE="$1"
TMPDIR=`mktemp -d /tmp/deb.XXXXXXXXXX` || exit 1
#OUTPUT=`basename "$DEBFILE" .deb`.modfied.deb
OUTPUT="."

#if [[ -e "$OUTPUT" ]]; then
# echo "$OUTPUT exists."
# rm -r "$TMPDIR"
# exit 1
#fi

dpkg-deb -x "$DEBFILE" "$TMPDIR"
dpkg-deb --control "$DEBFILE" "$TMPDIR"/DEBIAN

if [[ ! -e "$TMPDIR"/DEBIAN/control ]]; then
echo DEBIAN/control not found.

rm -r "$TMPDIR"
exit 1
fi

CONTROL="$TMPDIR"/DEBIAN/control

MOD=`stat -c "%y" "$CONTROL"`
$EDITOR "$CONTROL"

if [[ "$MOD" == `stat -c "%y" "$CONTROL"` ]]; then
echo Not modfied.
else
echo Building new deb...
dpkg -b "$TMPDIR" "$OUTPUT"
fi

rm -r "$TMPDIR"

[roobie]

Beautiful! Made my life that much easier!

Nice one! Thanks a lot! :KS

[vambo]

What a damned useful little script! Many Thanks.

[ricky06181993]

I am completely new to ubuntu and need to know what exactly i need to do to change the dependency in boxee from "libxmlrpc-c3" to "libxmlrpc-c3-0".

Thanks in advance for any help,
Ryan.

[derSoldat]

Registered just to say thanks! This script did exactly what I needed.

[emanhossny]

Hello All,
I'm new to linux & have the problem "dependency is not satisfiable libxmlrpc-c3"
So plz, tell me how can I solve it?

[princej88]

awesome script. Thanks!

[ccsalway]

Im getting:

$sudo: videbcontrol: command not found


Im running Ubuntu server 11.04

[archman]

Im getting:

$sudo: videbcontrol: command not found


Im running Ubuntu server 11.04

Your script is not in PATH, but you don't have to add it. Just cd to the location containing that script and issue "./scriptname ...".

[mrgoodknife]

I've got some questions, because I'm a straight up n00b and downloaded Ubuntu only because it was the best of the "free" options since my copy of windows apparently lost its legitimacy when I did a clean install. I'm trying to turn this computer into a media center, so if someone could basically explain this to me step-by-step, I would greatly appreciate it.

[helpdeskdan]

Thanks! I was leary - 4 year old scripts rarely work, but this did exactly what I needed to get boxee to ignore my libvdpau1 problem. Only one slight modification on line 31 - vim is better than vi. ;-)

As for mrgoodknife, it is frowned upon to post unrelated questions in forums. Start a new thread to ask your question. Better yet, ask Google, who knows all.