Ubuntu Manpage: origtargz - fetch the orig tarball of a Debian package from various sources, and unpack it

NAME

       origtargz - fetch the orig tarball of a Debian package from various sources, and unpack it

SYNOPSIS

       origtargz [OPTIONS] [--unpack[=no|once|yes]]
       origtargz --help

DESCRIPTION

origtargz downloads the orig tarball of a Debian package, and also unpacks it into the current directory,
if it just contains a debian directory. The main use for origtargz is with debian-dir-only repository
checkouts, but it is useful as a general tarball download wrapper. The version number for the tarball to
be downloaded is determined from debian/changelog. It should be invoked from the top level directory of
an unpacked Debian source package.

Various download locations are tried:

• First, an existing file is looked for.

• Directories given with --path are searched.

• pristine-tar is tried.

• pristine-lfs is tried.

• apt-get source is tried when apt-cache showsrc reports a matching version.

• Finally, uscan --download --download-current-version is tried.

When asked to unpack the orig tarball, origtargz will remove all files and directories from the current
directory, except the debian directory, and the VCS repository directories. Note that this will drop all
non-committed changes for the patch system in use (e.g. source format "3.0 (quilt)"), and will even
remove all patches from the package when no patch system is in use (the original "1.0" source format).
Some VCS control files outside debian/ preserved (.bzr-builddeb, .bzr-ignore, .gitignore, .hgignore), if
stored in VCS.

The default behavior is to unpack the orig tarball if the current directory is empty except for a debian
directory and the VCS files mentioned above.

NOTES

       Despite origtargz being called "targz", it will work with any compression scheme used for the tarball.

       A similar tool to unpack orig tarballs is uupdate(1). uupdate creates a new  working  directory,  unpacks
       the  tarball, and applies the Debian .diff.gz changes. In contrast, origtargz uses the current directory,
       keeping VCS metadata.

       For Debian package repositories that keep the full upstream source, other tools should be used to upgrade
       the repository from the new tarball. See gbp-import-orig(1) and svn-upgrade(1) for examples. origtargz is
       still useful for downloading the current tarball.

OPTIONS

       -p, --path directory
           Add directory to the list of locations to search for an existing tarball.  When found, a hardlink  is
           created if possible, otherwise a symlink.

       -u, --unpack[=no|once|yes]
           Unpack  the  downloaded orig tarball to the current directory, replacing everything except the debian
           directory. Existing files are removed, except  for  debian/  and  VCS  files.  Preserved  are:  .bzr,
           .bzrignore, .bzr-builddeb, .git, .gitignore, .hg, .hgignore, _darcs and .svn.

           no  Do not unpack the orig tarball.

           once (default when --unpack is not used)
               If  the  current  directory contains only a debian directory (and possibly some dotfiles), unpack
               the orig tarball. This is the default behavior.

           yes (default for --unpack without argument)
               Always unpack the orig tarball.

       -d, --download-only
           Alias for --unpack=no.

       -t, --tar-only
           When using apt-get source, pass --tar-only to it. The default is to download the full source  package
           including  .dsc  and  .diff.gz  or  .debian.tar.gz components so debdiff can be used to diff the last
           upload to the next one. With --tar-only, only download the .orig.tar.* file.

       --clean
           Remove existing files as with --unpack. Note that like --unpack, this will remove upstream files even
           if they are stored in VCS.

AUTHOR