Can you please provide an easy way to extract specified files from a deb package? Is there one already?
I needed only one *.el from emacs-el-19.30. In trying to get at this one file, it was necessary to extract the (about) 10MB of the package into a temporary directory. I tried dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile, but this just seemed to extract the contents of the tar file to standard output. It would have helped to have been able to extract a file, as one can do with tar files. Have you truly failed to provide a tool for edification of the masses, or is this an oversight on my part? I couldn't easily figure out how to do it. The "dpkg --help" output could surely be easily improved. I think the key for the output screen for "dpkg -l" also needs to be improved. But at this point, utility is the issue. A further remark. In the dpkg 1.1.3 source, which I was forced to compile to use on a slackware system (I do not recommend this except under the most extreme caution, as it is even thornier than trying to install a Slackware package on a debian system), is an excellent man page. I installed it on my system, but when I upgraded to dpkg 1.1.5, the man page was overwritten. Can this please be made available in an alpha or beta state? Back to work. In installing the single file I needed, I managed the foolishness to delete all of /usr/lib/emacs/19.30/lisp/*elc . Because I cannot just extract these files in any way I understand from the deb package, I am forced to reinstall emacs. Sometimes one even needs to get inside a hermetically sealed unit. All this is a pain when you are running on 3 to 10 MB free disk space . Alan Davis
