DOSE-CEVE(1)

📦
version 7.0.0 · 9 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 DOSE-CEVE(1) — the ceve girlies' manual 💖

okay bestie, welcome to DOSE Tools, this is ceve, and she is literally the moment.

✨ NAME ✨

ceve — parse package metadata 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

ceve [-h] [-v] [-c pkgspec] [-r pkgspec] [--depth=n] [-T format] [-G
graph type] [-o filename] input-spec [input-spec...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so. ceve is a generalized metadata parser. She reads package specifications, extracts package metadata from them, does some little manipulations (slay), and then outputs that metadata in one of several formats. iconic behavior honestly.

input-spec is a url that says what the input format is and which file to grab the input from. for the possible list of schemes, go look at the -t parameter, she's got the receipts 💅

some examples of URLs:

  • deb://Packages.gz — (the Debian file packages.gz in the current directory)
  • cudf:///home/examples/cudf/test.cudf — (the CUDF file /home/examples/cudf/test.cudf)

💜 OPTIONS 💜

🍓 MISC OPTIONS

  • -h, --help — displays the help message. the classic.
  • -v, --verbose — be verbose. and like, you can repeat this option for more verbosity. go off.
  • --version — show the program's version and exit.
  • --progress — print progress bars. 🫶
  • --timers — print timing information.
  • --quiet — do no print any messages. (that's what the original says and I'm not fixing it, it's giving sleepy energy 😭)

🔥 INPUT OPTIONS

Dose3 accepts files compressed with gzip(1) or bzip2(1), depending on compile-time options. no cap.

  • -t input-spec — select the input type. possible values are:
    • cudf — Cudf file format
    • pef — PEF file format. the PEF format (Package Exchange Format) is a generic 822 file format used to encode package dependencies. deb, opam, debsrc and edsp are all based on the pef format.
    • csw — OpenCSW Solaris packages binary format
    • opam — Opam Package universe in Opam/PEF format. this format is a 822 textual format encoding the opam universe.
    • deb — for Debian binary package files, also known as Packages files.
    • debsrc — for Debian source package files, also knows as Sources files. (yes, "knows". I'm keeping it, it's cute.)
    • edsp — apt-get External Dependency Solver Protocol
    • hdlist — RPM hdlists. Binary file format.
    • synthesis — urpmi synthesis hdlists. XML Based format
  • --trim — consider only installable packages. bye to the rest ✂️
  • --latest n — consider only the latest -n most recent versions of each package, older versions of packages are ignored.
  • -c, --cone=vpkglist — okay so listen. the match of an atomic dependency (a package name p possibly together with a version constraint c) is the set of all packages in the repository with name p, and a version that satisfies the constraint c. the dependency cone of a package p is the set of all matches of all atomic dependencies of p, together with their respective dependency cones. the package specification pkgspec is a list of packages (separated by a semicolon), where each package is specified as follows: (name,version).

this option extracts the union of the dependency cones of all packages selected by vpkglist.

Example: =over 12

-c 'golang-golang-x-tools (= 1:0.0~git20150716.0.87156cb+dfsg1-4),golang-golang-x-tools-dev'
  • -r, --rcone=vpkglist — using the same syntax as in -c, this option use the reverse dependency relation to make the transitive closure. 🔁
  • --depth n — in combination with the -c or -r options, this specifies the maximum depth for the transitive closure.
  • --request installation-request — specifies an installation request of the form "install: vpkglist" or "remove: vpkglist" or "upgrade: vpkglist" where vpkglist is a list of (real) packages possibly associated with a constraint. Ex.: bash (< 2.0), exim (= 3.1-debian1). this option can be repeated to specify install, remove and upgrade actions. 💅

Examples:

--request "install: bash (< 2.0), exim (= 3.1-debian1)"
--request "upgrade: apt-cudf"

🧚 OUTPUT OPTIONS

  • -o, --outfile=filename — instead of stdout, send output to the file filename.
  • -d, --outdir=directory — set the output directory (default current directory)
  • --dot — save the explanation graph (one for each package) in dot format.
  • -G graph type — specifies the graph type format to compute. this option must be used together with the option -T dot|gml|grml. default is syn. possible values are:
    • syn — for the syntactic graph where disjunctions nodes and conflicts are explicitly added to the graph.
    • pkg — for the package graph where all dependencies are threated uniformly and conflicts are not added to the graph. (yes, "threated". we keep her exactly as she is.)
    • strdeps — the strong dependency graph. a package p strong depends on q iff p cannot be installed if q is not installed.
    • strcnf
    • conj — the conjunctive graph where only conjunctive dependencies are considered.
    • dom
  • -T format — specifies the output format to use. default is cnf. possible values are:
    • cnf — output in CNF format.
    • dimacs — output in DIMACS format for CNF formulae.
    • cudf — pretty-printed output in an RFC 822-like format
    • deb — binary packages in deb822 format.
    • debsrc — source packages in deb822 format.
    • dot — a graph in Dot/GraphViz format.
    • gml — a graph in GML format.
    • grml — a graph in GraphML format.
    • table — plain text output of three integer values: the universe size, the number of edges in the dependency graph, the number of conflicts in the universe.

🌈 DEBIAN SPECIFIC OPTIONS

Multi-arch annotations are handled by ceve. packages whose's architecture is neither the native architecture nor in the list of foreign architectures (see below) are ignored. 👑 (again: "whose's". she said what she said, I'm not touching it.)

  • --deb-native-arch=name — specify the native architecture. the default behavior is to deduce the native architecture from the first package stanza in the input that has an architecture different from all.
  • --deb-foreign-archs=name [,name] ... — specify a comma-separated list of foreign architectures. the default is an empty list of foreign architectures.
  • --deb-ignore-essential — by default all essential package are considered as a dependency of all packages in the universe. this option allows the user to ignore essential packages.
  • --deb-host-arch=name — native/cross compile host architecture, defaults to native architecture.
  • --deb-builds-from — add builds-from relationship of binary packages on source packages as dependency. this allows one to create graphs for bootstrapping purposes. 🚀
  • -P, --deb-profiles=name[,name...] — comma separated list of activated build profiles.
  • --deb-drop-b-d-indep — drop Build-Depends-Indep dependencies from Debian source packages.
  • --deb-drop-b-d-arch — drop Build-Depends-Arch dependencies from Debian source packages.

⭐ EXAMPLES ⭐

find all the reverse binary dependencies of the package patchutils:

dose-ceve --deb-native-arch amd64 -r patchutils -T deb \
        deb:///var/lib/apt/lists/*_dists_sid_main_binary-amd64_Packages \
        | grep-dctrl -n -s Package '' | sort -u

find all the source packages that (directly or indirectly) build depend on patchutils:

dose-ceve -T debsrc --deb-native-arch=amd64 -r patchutils \
        debsrc:///var/lib/apt/lists/*_dists_sid_main_source_Sources \
        deb:///var/lib/apt/lists/*_dists_sid_main_binary-amd64_Packages \
        | grep-dctrl -n -s Package '' | sort -u

find the source packages (-T debsrc) that have in a relation builds-from with all the binary package in the reverse dependency cone of libssl-dev (a specific version constraint).

dose-ceve --deb-builds-from --deb-native-arch=amd64 -T debsrc \
-r 'libssl-dev (>= 0.9.8)' deb://Sid-amd64-Packages-050812.bz2 \
debsrc://Sid-Sources-050812.bz2
💖 that's the whole page bestie. every flag, every default, every weird little typo — all preserved, no cap. go build some dependency cones, you ate. 🫶

okay mwah, that's a wrap — this is DOSE Tools, dated 2026-07-06, and you're officially a ceve girlie now. periodt. 💅✨

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