APT Browse: A web browser for the contents of Debian (and Ubuntu) packages

https://www.apt-browse.org/

by night-rider • 3 years ago

131 45 3 years ago

apt-browse.org

cassianoleal• 3 years ago

What's wrong with https://packages.debian.org/ and https://packages.ubuntu.com/ ?

4oo4• 3 years ago

Also apt-file so you don't have to leave the terminal

treffer• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

In that case, what's wrong with https://sources.debian.org (other than people apparently not being aware of it)?

epilys• 3 years ago

You can see the contents of a package in Debian's package site, you have to go to the available architectures of a package and select the list of files for the one you want

You can also search contents of packages if you select the option in search (the other options are package name, description)

haunter• 3 years ago

The tracker is even better imo

For example https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/curl

rgovostes• 3 years ago

For one, packages.ubuntu.com throws errors or is down all the time. (I got an Internal Server Error just now).

The usability of searching "package directories" vs "the contents of packages", having to toggle between package names vs "source package names" vs descriptions, and choosing substring matching modes is... well, very typically Linux.

unwind2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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/...

unwind2• 3 years ago

Also I clearly had problems counting all the way to two. Darnit.

ognyankulev• 3 years ago

But why "newest" Debian release is 9.x (Stretch) released in 2017 (current alias "oldoldstable") ?

jwilk3• 3 years ago

And the latest Ubuntu appears to be bionic (18.04).

neilv• 3 years ago

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.)

jwilk3• 3 years ago

Looks like it hasn't been updated for years.

input_sh• 3 years ago

Ubuntu version goes up to bionic (18.04), so yeah, no update for five years now.

SomeHacker44• 3 years ago

The worst ones are Intel code names. I cannot remember one from the other.

suprjami• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

pncnmnp2• 3 years ago

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.

jwilk3• 3 years ago

You don't need sudo for that.

pncnmnp2• 3 years ago

Yup! Not sure why I put it there.

lathiat• 3 years ago

It’s also super handy to add -n to search the names only sometimes

gabereiser3• 3 years ago

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)

Andrex• 3 years ago

I wasn't expecting my world to be thrown so hard from reading HN comments today, but here we are...

bayindirh• 3 years ago

...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.

gabereiser3• 3 years ago

trying not to completely blow their mind. Keeping it simple, describing it just as an archive.

msla• 3 years ago

We all have much to learn from the past tech

Yes, we certainly can't forget shell archives.

oefrha• 3 years ago

The rpm file format is indeed a pile of bytes put together haphazardly.

https://xyrillian.de/thoughts/posts/argh-pm.html

npteljes• 3 years ago

It makes more sense if you realize that for a good lot of tech, the goal was not to create a better tech. Even if they happen to say so. It's just people wanting to go ahead, to do their own thing, to make money, be famous, be the one that created a thing. Learning from the past is orthogonal to these goals.

m463• 3 years ago

It's interesting to note that tar files have no checksum/crc, the .gz compression takes care of that.

SoftTalker• 3 years ago

The tar format was originally intended to be written to tape.

glandium• 3 years ago

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.

gabereiser3• 3 years ago

devil in the details. But yes, you are correct. There are archives of archives in the archive. :insert Keanu whoa:

tenebrisalietum• 3 years ago

I think bookworm is going to support zstd, or at least `tar` will.

qznc• 3 years ago

Once I made myself a little script to build Deb packages using only basic tools: https://github.com/qznc/simpledeb/blob/master/simpledeb#L61

You need to populate a few files with certain values but apart from that it is just tar and ar.

hleszek• 3 years ago

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.

cbsks2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

DNF as well with “dnf provides <filename>”

oneshtein• 3 years ago

On rpm-based systems: `rpm -qf /path/to/file`.

It's very helpful when I stare at a file and thinking, "WTF this file doing there?". These two commands help me immediately: `rpm -qif file` to show description of file package, `rpm -qlf file` to show list of other files in the same package.

loloquwowndueo• 3 years ago

dpkg -S /your/path

Have fun :)

pabs3• 3 years ago

Does anyone use this regularly? What situations would it be useful in?

tpoacher• 3 years ago

how is this different / "better" than apt-file?

APT Browse: A web browser for the contents of Debian (and Ubuntu) packages

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