Is it possible to reverse engineer or have a dry run of a deb
package in order to see what files and directories it will deploy and perform other settings modifications? Sort of like list the contents of a tar file without extracting them.
2 Answers
dpkg --dry-run -i package.deb
will show you what will happen, and see this question on server fault.
dpkg -e package.deb
will extract the control files.
You can use ar command in the terminal. It can display and extract .deb files. Check the control files also, especially the contents of pre* and post* files, since it holds the commands a deb file (or the dpkg) would execute when the pre installation, extraction or post installation happen.
deb
file with the archive manager and look at the contents.