[HN Gopher] APT Browse: A web browser for the contents of Debian...
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APT Browse: A web browser for the contents of Debian (and Ubuntu)
packages
Author : night-rider
Score : 59 points
Date : 2023-04-05 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apt-browse.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apt-browse.org)
| suprjami wrote:
| I have used https://pkgs.org/ for years, which has many more
| distros, includes popular third-party repos like EPEL, and lets
| you filter to distro or package type you're interested in.
| rascul wrote:
| pkgs.org doesn't seem to let you inspect the contents of the
| files in the packages (unless I missed it). I guess that's what
| the APT Browse thing does but it doesn't seem to be working for
| me at the moment.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Fun fact, deb packages are just ar files with a funky header
| (d.e.b) and some pre/post scripts. Ar files are also .o files
| after compilation but before linking, what!?! Also, tar is based
| on Ar, WHAT!?! Elf files, the whole thing is standardized!
| WHAAAT!?!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ar_(Unix)
| bayindirh wrote:
| ...and younger generations think that the older tech and file
| formats are just incapable piles of bytes put together
| haphazardly.
|
| We all have much to learn from the past tech, yet we ignore and
| re-invent the same problems over and over again, proverbially
| walking in circles.
|
| BTW, while the parent is technically correct, .deb files can
| contain much more features and magic than that.
| m463 wrote:
| It's interesting to note that tar files have no checksum/crc,
| the .gz compression takes care of that.
| Andrex wrote:
| I wasn't expecting my world to be thrown so hard from reading
| HN comments today, but here we are...
| glandium wrote:
| Fun fact, deb packages are just ar files with a funky header,
| containing a "debian-binary" file containing the deb version
| (nowadays 2.0), and two compressed tar files, control.tar.$comp
| and data.tar.$comp, where $comp can be gz, xz, or whatever else
| is supported.
| unwind wrote:
| Quite neat, but I had two problems:
|
| 1. The naming is confusing, a web interface that lets you browse
| a particular database is not generally called "a web browser" for
| that database. A web browser is the actual software you use to
| access the web.
|
| 2. I searched for a (not so) random package [1] and quickly got a
| bunch of matches. I did not understand the ordering (the latest
| version number was not on top).
|
| 3. When I clicked the first match, I got a "Bad Gateway" error
| from [2], but I guess it might be squeezed by HN just now.
|
| [1]: https://www.apt-browse.org/search/?query=gentoo
|
| [2]: https://www.apt-
| browse.org/browse/debian/jessie/main/amd64/g...
| Atlas22 wrote:
| Regarding 3, It seems like its related to package size.
| Openssh-server has the same problem [3]. Was also looking at
| some moderately sized packages and it was struggling but would
| eventually return the page. Smaller packages seem to be no
| problem.
|
| [3]: https://www.apt-
| browse.org/browse/debian/stretch/main/amd64/...
| ognyankulev wrote:
| But why "newest" Debian release is 9.x (Stretch) released in 2017
| (current alias "oldoldstable") ?
| jwilk wrote:
| And the latest Ubuntu appears to be bionic (18.04).
| [deleted]
| hleszek wrote:
| You know what would be nice?
|
| To do the reverse: I provide a file path and you can determine in
| which package(s) it is present.
| cbsks wrote:
| dpkg or apt-file can do this from the command line. Or you can
| use https://packages.ubuntu.com/
|
| https://askubuntu.com/questions/481/how-do-i-find-the-packag...
| itsmartapuntocm wrote:
| DNF as well with "dnf provides <filename>"
| neilv wrote:
| https://www.apt-browse.org/search/?query=firefox-esr
|
| doesn't seem to be finding `firefox-esr` in current Debian
| Stable:
|
| https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/firefox-esr
|
| Also note that there are security updates to the version in
| bullseye:
|
| https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firefox-esr
|
| (BTW, I really wish projects wouldn't have unnecessary codenames.
| Search engines could deal with people searching for "foosoftware
| 11" rather than "barcodename". Now we have to memorize numerous
| codenames for one thing, and frequently translate back and forth
| between codenames and the actual name and version number.)
| jwilk wrote:
| Looks like it hasn't been updated for years.
| input_sh wrote:
| Ubuntu version goes up to bionic (18.04), so yeah, no update
| for five years now.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| The worst ones are Intel code names. I cannot remember one from
| the other.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| What's wrong with https://packages.debian.org/ and
| https://packages.ubuntu.com/ ?
| 4oo4 wrote:
| Also apt-file so you don't have to leave the terminal
| treffer wrote:
| It seems to put lore focus on the extracted dpkg. So you can
| browse and download the unpacked files.
|
| I prefer the search on the original sites, but this looks neat
| if you want the payload of a package.
| 1kurac wrote:
| In that case, what's wrong with https://sources.debian.org
| (other than people apparently not being aware of it)?
| cbsks wrote:
| sources.debian.org has the source for the package. apt-
| browse.org has the files that are installed by the package.
|
| Compare:
|
| https://sources.debian.org/src/htop/2.0.2-1/
|
| https://www.apt-
| browse.org/browse/debian/stretch/main/amd64/...
| haunter wrote:
| The tracker is even better imo
|
| For example https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/curl
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| pncnmnp wrote:
| Back in 2016, when I was exploring Linux for the first time, one
| of my favorite commands was "apt-cache search <keywords>." It
| performs a grep on package descriptions, and I discovered many
| fascinating things this way.
| jwilk wrote:
| You don't need sudo for that.
| pncnmnp wrote:
| Yup! Not sure why I put it there.
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(page generated 2023-04-05 23:00 UTC)