Debian...ontents(3pm)

okay bestie, gather round 💖 today's main character is the manual page Debian...ontents(3pm), straight out of the User Contributed Perl Documentation collection. yeah, that's the whole page name — she's a little mysterious like that ✨ and she's here to help you parse and search through apt-file's Contents files. let's get into it, no cap.

🌸 NAME 🌸

Debian::AptContents — parse/search through apt-file's Contents files

literally exactly what it says on the tin, bestie. she parses, she searches, she slays.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

my $c = Debian::AptContents->new( { cache_dir => '~/.cache/dh-make-perl' } );
my @pkgs = $c->find_file_packages('/usr/bin/foo');
my $dep = $c->find_perl_module_package('Foo::Bar');

that's the vibe. make an object, ask it which packages own a file, ask it which package gives you a Perl module. chef's kiss. 👑

💀 TODO 💀

okay so lowkey there's some unfinished business on this page and we're gonna be honest about it:

• This needs to really work not only for Perl modules. (it's giving very Perl-module-specific right now and that's the tea 💀)
• A module specific to Perl modules is needed by dh-make-perl, but it can subclass Debian::AptContents, which needs to become more generic.

so like, the glow-up is planned, we just haven't gotten there yet. periodt.

🎀 CONSTRUCTOR 🎀

• new — Constructs a new instance of the class. Expects at least the cache_dir option, so don't come to this party empty-handed, queen. 🫶

✨ FIELDS ✨

• cache_dir — (mandatory, btw, like actually required) the directory where the object stores its cache.
• homedir — a legacy option to specify the cache directory. old-school cool, still valid. ✨
• dist — used for filtering on the "distributon" part of the repository paths listed in sources.list. Default is empty, meaning no filtering — everyone's welcome, the door's open.
• contents_files — an arrayref of Contents file names. Default is to just let apt-file find them. she handles it, don't worry.
• cache_file — path to the file with cached parsed information from all Contents files. Default is Contents.cache under cache_dir.
• cache — filled by read_cache. Used by find_file_packages and (obviously) store_cache. obviously. 💅
• verbose — verbosity level. 0 means silent, and the bigger the number the more the jabber. Default is 1.

👑 OBJECT METHODS 👑

• warning — used internally. Given a verbosity level and a message, prints the message to STDERR if the verbosity level is greater than or equal of the value of verbose. internal queen, doing internal things.
• get_contents_files — reads sources.list, gives the repository paths to repo_source_to_contents_paths, and returns an arrayref of file names of Contents files.
• read_cache — reads the cached parsed Contents files. If there are Contents files with more recent mtime than that of the cache (or if there is no cache at all), parses all Contents and stores the cache via store_cache for later invocation. efficient? we love to see it. 🌈
• store_cache — writes the contents of the parsed cache to the cache_file. Storable is used to stream the data, and along with the information from Contents files, a time stamp is stored too. ⏰
• find_file_packages — returns a list of packages where the given file was found. Contents files store the package section together with the package name, and that part gets stripped off. Returns an empty list if the file is not found in any package. 😭 we've all been that file.
• find_perl_module_package( $module, $version ) — given a Perl module name (e.g. Foo::Bar), returns a Debian::Dependency object representing the required Debian package and version. If the module is only in perl core, a suitable dependency on perl is returned. For dual-lived modules — the ones that live in perl and in a separate package — only the latter is returned, since the perl package has versioned Provides for them. she knows what she's doing, trust. 🧚

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🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

• Damyan Ivanov <dmn@debian.org>
• gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org>

the icons who built this. respect. 👑

💅 COPYRIGHT & LICENSE 💅

Copyright (C) 2008, 2009, 2010, 2017 Damyan Ivanov <dmn@debian.org> Copyright (C) 2016, 2019 gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 ty for coming to my TED talk. this one shipped as perl v5.40.1, dated 2026-05-08, and yes the page name is literally Debian...ontents(3pm) — she contains multitudes, we stay obsessed. 💜