A Debian deb package is an archive that contains files to be installed on your system. There are ways to list the contents of a deb package before installation. Use the dpkg(1) command to achieve this easily.
List all files in the deb archive.
┌─[✗]─[jason@darkstar]─[~] └──╼ $dpkg --contents brave.deb |
List all files that are installed in the /usr/bin directory.
┌─[✗]─[jason@darkstar]─[~] └──╼ $dpkg --contents brave.deb | grep "/usr/bin" drwxrwxr-x root/root 0 2016-07-19 05:59 ./usr/bin/ lrwxrwxrwx root/root 0 2016-07-19 05:59 ./usr/bin/brave -> ../share/brave/brave |
This is how to list all files for a package that is already installed.
┌─[✗]─[jason@darkstar]─[~] └──╼ $dpkg -L vim /. /usr /usr/bin /usr/bin/vim.basic /usr/share /usr/share/doc /usr/share/bug /usr/share/bug/vim /usr/share/bug/vim/script /usr/share/bug/vim/presubj /usr/share/lintian /usr/share/lintian/overrides /usr/share/lintian/overrides/vim /usr/share/doc/vim |
It is possible to repackage an already installed package into a deb archive. Install the dpkg-repack utility.
┌─[jason@darkstar]─[~] └──╼ $sudo apt install dpkg-repack |
Then we can repackage VIM into a deb archive, for installation on another machine, but this would still require any dependencies.
┌─[jason@darkstar]─[~] └──╼ $sudo dpkg-repack vim dpkg-deb: building package 'vim' in './vim_7.4.1689-3ubuntu1.3_amd64.deb'. |
Now I have a Debian deb archive of VIM ready to be installed again.
┌─[jason@darkstar]─[~] └──╼ $ls -hula vim*.deb -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1012K Oct 14 13:12 vim_7.4.1689-3ubuntu1.3_amd64.deb |
This is very easy to do, and could come in very useful in the future.