debsnap(1) retrieve old snapshots of Debian packages

SYNOPSIS

debsnap [options] package [version]

debsnap [-h | --help] [--version]

DESCRIPTION

debsnap is a tool to help with retrieving snapshots of old packages from a daily archive repository.

The only publicly available snapshot archive is currently located at http://snapshot.debian.org

By default, debsnap will download all the available versions for package that are found in the snapshot archive. If a version is specified, only that particular version will be downloaded, if available.

OPTIONS

The following options are available:

-d destination, --destdir destination
Directory to place retrieved packages.

-f, --force
Force writing into an existing destination. By default debsnap will insist the destination directory does not exist yet unless it is explicitly specified to be '.' (the current working directory). This is to avoid files being accidentally overwritten by what is fetched from the archive and to provide a guarantee for other scripts that only the files fetched will be present there upon completion.

-v, --verbose
Report on the debsnap configuration being used and progress during the download operation. Please always use this option when reporting bugs.

--list
Don't download but just list versions.

--binary
Download binary packages instead of source packages.

-a, --architecture
Specify architecture of downloaded binary packages. Implies --binary. This can be given multiple times in order to download binary packages for multiple architectures.

--first
Specify the minimum version of a package which will be downloaded. Any versions which compare larger than this, according to dpkg, will be considered for download. May be used in combination with --last.

--last
Specify the maximum version of a package which will be downloaded. Any package versions which compare less than this, according to dpkg, will be considered for download. May be used in combination with --first.

-h, --help
Show a summary of these options.

--version
Show the version of debsnap.

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

debsnap may also be configured through the use of the following options in the devscripts configuration files:

DEBSNAP_VERBOSE
Same as the command line option --verbose. Set to yes to enable.

DEBSNAP_DESTDIR
Set a default path for the destination directory. If unset ./source-<package_name> will be used. The command line option --destdir will override this.

DEBSNAP_BASE_URL
The base url for the snapshots archive.

If unset this defaults to http://snapshot.debian.org

EXIT STATUS

debsnap will return an exit status of 0 if all operations succeeded, 1 if a fatal error occurred, and 2 if some packages failed to be downloaded but operations otherwise succeeded as expected. In some cases packages may fail to be downloaded because they are no longer available on the snapshot mirror, so any caller should expect this may occur in normal use.

EXAMPLES

debsnap -a amd64 xterm 256-1
Download the binary package of a specific xterm version for amd64 architecture.
debsnap -a armel xterm
Download binary packages for all versions of xterm for armel architecture.
debsnap --binary xterm 256-1
Download binary packages for a specific xterm version but for all architectures.
debsnap --binary xterm
Download binary packages for all versions of xterm for all architectures.
aptitude search '~i' -F '%p %V' | while read pkg ver; do debsnap -a $(dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_ARCH) -a all $pkg $ver; done
Download binary packages of all packages that are installed on the system.

FILES

/etc/devscripts.conf
Global devscripts configuration options. Will override hardcoded defaults.
~/.devscripts
Per-user configuration options. Will override any global configuration.

AUTHORS

David Paleino <[email protected]>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2010 David Paleino

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 3 or (at your option) any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.

BUGS

Reporting bugs

The program is part of the devscripts package. Please report bugs using `reportbug devscripts`