dctrl2xml

1

dctrl2xml

Debian control data to XML converter

          &dhcommand;

            -x
            -j

            -f FILE

## DESCRIPTION

&dhcommand; is a tool that converts Debian control data into an XML representation. It can be used to convert data which is normally found in debian/control, .changes, .dsc, Packages, Sources, and similar files to XML.

For most fields &dhcommand; just uses the field name as element name and the field data as element content. For other fields, such as package interrelationship fields (Depends, Build-Depends, etc.) or the Files field in .changes or Sources files, &dhcommand; additionally parses their field data to represent it in a more fine-structured form.

## OPTIONS

For a full summary of options, run &dhcommand; `--help`.

`--version`

- Show dctrl2xml's version number.

`-h`, `--help`

- Show help about options.

`-f `FILE``, `--file=`FILE``

- Read Debian control data from file `FILE` instead of standard input. `FILE` can be either a plain text file or a gzip, bzip2 or ZIP file.

`-x`, `--xml`

- Output Debian control data as XML (default).

`-j`, `--json`

- Output Debian control data as JSON.

## EXAMPLES

`dctrl2xml -f /var/lib/dpkg/available`

- Convert the whole

  dpkg

  1 available file to XML and print it to standard output. This is a typical stress test for &dhcommand;.

`apt-cache show hello build-essential | dctrl2xml`

- Convert the package records of the hello and build-essential packages to XML and print it to standard output. This is an example of how &dhcommand; can be used in pipes where it reads the control data from standard input.

`apt-cache showsrc hello | dctrl2xml | xmllint --format -`

- This is similar to the above example, except that the

  xmllint

  1 tool (which is in the libxml2-utils Debian package) is used to reformat and reindent &dhcommand;'s output to make it more human readable and that the source package records of the hello package are used.

`apt-cache showsrc hello | dctrl2xml -j`

- In this example hello's source package record is printed as JSON instead of XML.

## SEE ALSO

deb-control

5

## AUTHOR

Written by &dhusername; &dhemail;.