Debian packages are regular ar archives. They contains three files:
- debian-binary: regular text file, contains the version of the deb package format
- control.tar.gz: compressed file, contains file md5sums and control directory for the deb package
- data.tar.xz: compressed file, contains all the files which will be installed
To unpack a .deb archive you can use following ar command with x
parameter or if you want more verbose output, xv
parameter as below:
$ ar x example.deb
$ ar -xv example.deb
x - debian-binary
x - control.tar.gz
x - data.tar.xz
If you are using a Debian based distribution or you have dpkg installed, you can also use dpkg to extract/unpack deb package without installing in your system:
$ dpkg -x package.deb /tmp/out
You have to provide directory for unpack at the last parameter of the command.
When command finished, you will see the deb package contents in /tmp/out
directory.