Extract Deb files from command line

Debian and its derivatives use the .deb format to distribute their packages. To extract them, use ar – Yes, the very program we programmers use to make static libraries.

ar x sudo_1.6.9p17-2_i386.deb

Or we can directly extract things from data.tar.gz contained in the .deb file:

ar p sudo_1.6.9p17-2_i386.deb data.tar.gz | tar -xzf -

No longer a user of Debian GNU/Linux, I still have to remember how to extract .deb files. I frequently need to cross-compile a 64-bit version of my program on a 32-bit system, and vice versa; but I don’t want to cross-compile by myself so many libraries on which my program depends. Instead, I find it a good idea to download a right .deb file from the Debian Packages Repository and pick out the .so files.

Tags: compression, Debian, Gentoo, Linux