pk4(1)

💖 pk4 — like, the source-package-fetching bestie 💖

okay so first things first, this is a page from the User Manuals section, and the star of the show is pk4 💅

✨ NAME ✨

pk4 — make available the Debian source package producing the specified package 🎀

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pk4 [options] package...

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so pk4 takes your argument(s) and figures out what they are, bestie. it resolves them as either:

1. the name of a Debian binary package, and then it selects that package's Debian source package 👑
2. the name of a Debian source package, and it just selects it, periodt 💅
3. or a file path, and it selects the Debian source package of the package that owns that file 🔍

and the source package version it grabs? it's either the installed version (if there even is one) or the installation candidate, exactly as apt-cache policy says. no cap. 📋

then — and this is the good part — pk4 downloads the entire selected source package (literally every file referenced by its .dsc file, and the .dsc file itself 💖) and prints out the output directory path so you know where your new babies live. 🗂️✨

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💜 OPTIONS 💜

• -allow_unauthenticated — whether to allow unauthenticated source packages, i.e. it disables signature checking. 🚨 like, be careful with this one fr fr.
• -bin — restrict the search to binary packages only. 🧸
• -complete — whether to return shell completions. this should usually only ever be set by shell completion functions, not by you, bestie 🙈
• -dest string — the directory to store source packages in (default ~/.cache/pk4). 📁
• -file — interpret the argument as a file name and operate on the package that provides that file. 🔎
• -resolve_only — resolve the provided arguments to source package and source package version, then print them to stdout in %s\t%s\n format and exit. no downloading, just vibes 🏃♀️
• -shell string — which shell to start in the output directory after downloading the source (default $SHELL). 🐚
• -src — restrict the search to source packages only. 📦
• -verbose — whether to print messages to stderr. 🗣️
• -version string — use the specified source package version (default: installed package version, or latest known if it's not installed). 🔢

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

                            # Avail the current Linux kernel sources:
                     pk4 -src linux

              # Avail the sources which produced Debian binary package libbz2-1.0
              pk4 libbz2-1.0

              # Avail the sources of whichever package currently provides vi:
              pk4 -file $(which vi)

              # Fetch the i3 source, apply a bugfix, rebuild and replace installed packages:
              pk4 i3
              patch -p1 < /tmp/myfix.patch
              pk4-replace

              # Avail all debhelper build system implementations:
              pk4 -allow_unauthenticated $(grep '^dh-*' /var/cache/pk4/completion.both.txt)
              # Grep through their sources:
              grep -r option ~/.cache/pk4/dh-*

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🎀 CONFIGURATION FILE 🎀

you can configure these attributes in ~/.config/pk4/pk4.deb822:

Disk-Usage-Limit bytes

Example:

Disk-Usage-Limit: 2GiB

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🪝 HOOKS 🪝

here are the hooks you can configure, bestie:

after-download

after-download hooks run after the package was successfully downloaded. 🎉 Examples:

# Automatically create a git repository for each package:
mkdir -p ~/.config/pk4/hooks-enabled/after-download/
ln -s /usr/share/pk4/hooks-available/after-download/git-init \
~/.config/pk4/hooks-enabled/after-download/

unpack

unpack hooks replace the unpack phase: the moment one or more unpack hooks are found, pk4 runs them instead of running dpkg-source -x. 👀 Examples:

# Unpack source into a new git-buildpackage repository:
apt install git-buildpackage
mkdir -p ~/.config/pk4/hooks-enabled/unpack/
ln -s /usr/share/pk4/hooks-available/unpack/gbp \
~/.config/pk4/hooks-enabled/unpack/

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• pk4-generate-index(1) — (Re-)generate index files for pk4 🗂️
• pk4-replace(1) — build sources and replace currently installed packages 🔁

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Michael Stapelberg <stapelberg at debian.org> 💖

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and that's the whole page, bestie! this one came from the Linux manual, the OCTOBER 2017 edition, and yeah it's pk4(1) — go fetch yourself some sources, you absolute icon 🫶🌸💅