debcheckout(1)

NAME

   debcheckout - checkout the development repository of a Debian package

SYNOPSIS

   debcheckout [OPTIONS] PACKAGE [DESTDIR]
   debcheckout [OPTIONS] REPOSITORY_URL [DESTDIR]
   debcheckout --help

DESCRIPTION

   debcheckout retrieves the information about the Version Control System
   used to maintain a given Debian package (the PACKAGE argument), and
   then checks out the latest (potentially unreleased) version of the
   package from its repository.  By default the repository is checked out
   to the PACKAGE directory; this can be overridden by providing the
   DESTDIR argument.

   The information about where the repository is available is expected to
   be found in Vcs-* fields available in the source package record. For
   example, the vim package exposes such information with a field like
   Vcs-Hg:http://hg.debian.org/hg/pkg-vim/vim, you can see it by grepping
   through apt-cache showsrc vim.

   If more than one source package record containing Vcs-* fields is
   available, debcheckout will select the record with the highest version
   number.  Alternatively, a particular version may be selected from those
   available by specifying the package name as PACKAGE=VERSION.

   If you already know the URL of a given repository you can invoke
   debcheckout directly on it, but you will probably need to pass the
   appropriate -t flag. That is, some heuristics are in use to guess the
   repository type from the URL; if they fail, you might want to override
   the guessed type using -t.

   The currently supported version control systems are: Arch (arch),
   Bazaar (bzr), CVS (cvs), Darcs (darcs), Git (git), Mercurial (hg) and
   Subversion (svn).

OPTIONS

   GENERAL OPTIONS

   -a, --auth
       Work in authenticated mode; this means that for known repositories
       (mainly those hosted on https://alioth.debian.org) URL rewriting is
       attempted before checking out, to ensure that the repository can be
       committed to. For example, for Subversion repositories hosted on
       alioth this means that svn+ssh://svn.debian.org/... will be used
       instead of svn://svn.debian.org/....

       There are built-in rules for alioth.debian.org and github.com.
       Other hosts can be configured using DEBCHECKOUT_AUTH_URLS.

   -d, --details
       Only print a list of detailed information about the package
       repository, without checking it out; the output format is a list of
       fields, each field being a pair of TAB-separated field name and
       field value. The actual fields depend on the repository type. This
       action might require a network connection to the remote repository.

       Also see -p. This option and -p are mutually exclusive.

   -h, --help
       Print a detailed help message and exit.

   -p, --print
       Only print a summary about package repository information, without
       checking it out; the output format is TAB-separated with two
       fields: repository type, repository URL. This action works offline,
       it only uses "static" information as known by APT's cache.

       Also see -d. This option and -d are mutually exclusive.

   -P package, --package package
       When checking out a repository URL, instead of trying to guess the
       package name from the URL, use this package name.

   -t TYPE, --type TYPE
       Override the repository type (which defaults to some heuristics
       based on the URL or, in case of heuristic failure, the fallback
       "svn"); should be one of the currently supported repository types.

   -u USERNAME, --user USERNAME
       Specify the login name to be used in authenticated mode (see -a).
       This option implies -a: you don't need to specify both.

   -f FILE, --file FILE
       Specify that the named file should be extracted from the repository
       and placed in the destination directory. May be used more than once
       to extract multiple files.

   --source=never|auto|download-only|always
       Some packages only place the debian directory in version control.
       debcheckout can retrieve the remaining parts of the source using
       apt-get source and move the files into the checkout.

       never
           Only use the repository.

       auto (default)
           If the repository only contains the debian directory, retrieve
           the source package, unpack it, and also place the .orig.tar.gz
           file into the current directory. Else, do nothing.

       download-only
           Always retrieve the .orig.tar.gz file, but do not unpack it.

       always
           Always retrieve the .orig.tar.gz file, and if the repository
           only contains the debian directory, unpack it.

   VCS-SPECIFIC OPTIONS

   GIT-SPECIFIC OPTIONS

   --git-track BRANCHES
       Specify a list of remote branches which will be set up for tracking
       (as in gitbranch--track, see git-branch(1)) after the remote Git
       repository has been cloned. The list should be given as a space-
       separated list of branch names.

       As a shorthand, the string "*" can be given to require tracking of
       all remote branches.

CONFIGURATION VARIABLES

   The two configuration files /etc/devscripts.conf and ~/.devscripts are
   sourced by a shell in that order to set configuration variables.
   Command line options can be used to override configuration file
   settings. Environment variable settings are ignored for this purpose.
   The currently recognised variables are:

   DEBCHECKOUT_AUTH_URLS
       This variable should be a space separated list of Perl regular
       expressions and replacement texts, which must come in pairs: REGEXP
       TEXT REGEXP TEXT ... and so on. Each pair denotes a substitution
       which is applied to repository URLs if other built-in means of
       building URLs for authenticated mode (see -a) have failed.

       References to matching substrings in the replacement texts are
       allowed as usual in Perl by the means of $1, $2, ... and so on.

       This setting can be used to enable authenticated mode for most
       repositories out there.  Note that the Debian repositories on
       alioth.debian.org ($vcs.debian.org) are implicitly defined.

       Here is a sample snippet suitable for the configuration files:

        DEBCHECKOUT_AUTH_URLS='
         ^\w+://(svn\.example\.com)/(.*)    svn+ssh://$1/srv/svn/$2
         ^\w+://(git\.example\.com)/(.*)    git+ssh://$1/home/git/$2
        '

       Note that whitespace is not allowed in either regexps or
       replacement texts. Also, given that configuration files are sourced
       by a shell, you probably want to use single quotes around the value
       of this variable.

   DEBCHECKOUT_SOURCE
       This variable determines under what scenarios the associated
       orig.tar.gz for a package will be downloaded.  See the --source
       option for a description of the values.

   DEBCHECKOUT_USER
       This variable sets the username for authenticated mode. It can be
       overridden with the --user option. Setting this variable does not
       imply the use of authenticated mode, it still has to be activated
       with --auth.

SEE ALSO

   apt-cache(8), Section 6.2.5 of the Debian Developer's Reference (for
   more information about Vcs-* fields):
   https://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/best-pkging-practices.html#bpp-vcs.

AUTHOR

   debcheckout and this manpage have been written by Stefano Zacchiroli
   <zack@debian.org>.

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