CHDIST(1)

💖 CHDIST 💖

okay bestie, buckle up, this is chdist from the Debian Utilities manual, section 1, and it's literally the cutest way to juggle a whole bunch of distros at once 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

chdist — a script to easily play with several distributions 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

chdist [options] [command] [command parameters]

chdist [options] DIST command [command parameters]

so the second one up there? that syntax kicks in when DIST does not match any of the known commands from the list further down (peep the "COMMANDS" section, it's right there 👀). when that happens, the command can be, like, any program that exists on your system, and anything that's apt-based will use that DIST's apt data. iconic.

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

chdist is a rewrite of the thing that used to be called 'MultiDistroTools' (or mdt, for the girlies in a hurry 💖).

what's it for? making 'APT trees' for several distributions at once, so you can check on the status of packages in another distro without messing with chroots. no chroot, no problem, periodt. ✨

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -a, --arch ARCH — pick your architecture (default: dpkg --print-architecture).
• -d, --data-dir DIR — pick your data directory (default: ~/.chdist/).
• -h, --help — gives you a usage message, bestie 🫶
• --version — shows you the version info.

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👑 COMMANDS 👑

• create DIST [URL RELEASE SECTIONS] — sets up a brand new tree named DIST 🌱
• list — lists all the available DISTs
• apt DIST <update|source|show|showsrc|...> — runs apt inside DIST
• apt-get DIST <update|source|...> — runs apt-get inside DIST
• apt-cache DIST <show|showsrc|...> — runs apt-cache inside DIST
• apt-file DIST <update|search|...> — runs apt-file inside DIST
• apt-rdepends DIST [...] — runs apt-rdepends inside DIST
• build-rdeps DIST [...] — runs build-rdeps inside DIST. ⚠️ heads up: when the DIST origin and suite/codename are different from your system's origin and suite/codename, you gotta set them yourself using build-rdeps options. no cap.
• aptitude DIST [...] — runs aptitude inside DIST
• src2bin DIST SRCPKG — lists the binary packages for SRCPKG in DIST
• bin2src DIST BINPKG — lists the source package for BINPKG in DIST
• compare-packages DIST1 DIST2 [DIST3, ...]
• compare-bin-packages DIST1 DIST2 [DIST3, ...] — lists the versions of packages across several DISTributions 🔍
• compare-versions DIST1 DIST2
• compare-bin-versions DIST1 DIST2 — same as compare-packages/compare-bin-packages, but it also runs dpkg --compare-versions and shows you where the package is newer 👀
• compare-src-bin-packages DIST — compares sources and binaries for DIST
• compare-src-bin-versions DIST — same as compare-src-bin-packages, but it also runs dpkg --compare-versions and shows you where the package is newer
• grep-dctrl-packages DIST [...] — runs grep-dctrl on *_Packages inside DIST
• grep-dctrl-sources DIST [...] — runs grep-dctrl on *_Sources inside DIST

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🦋 COPYRIGHT 🦋

this program is copyright 2007 by Lucas Nussbaum and Luk Claes. it comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY — like, none, zero, nada 😭

it's licensed under the terms of the GPL, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. slay.

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💖 that's the whole page, bestie, go forth and distro-hop responsibly 💖

Debian Utilities · 2026-09-21 · CHDIST(1) — mwah, bye 🎀✨

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