Is there a utility similar to “apt-file” that can search source packages?

Question

I'm looking for a utility similar to apt-file that allows me to search the contents of source packages for certain files, rather than just binary packages.

Is such a utility available for Ubuntu?

Answer 1

apt-file is a simple wrapper for downloading the Contents-<ARCH>.gz files from a given Debian repository, then unpackaging and greping through them. Contents files are generated server-side (with great computional intensity) by merging the paths of all deb packages in the archive.

The specification for Debian repositories has no location reserved for a summary of all source package paths, and no implementation (apt-ftparchive and Launchpad's homebrewed method) has any facility for generating one.

If you really, really want this functionality, you could easily compile it yourself. Make this script, make it executable, and run it. It will take forever and eight days, but its output will be equivalent to a Source-Contents file.

#!/bin/bash

for PKGNAME in $(apt-cache pkgnames); do
    apt-get source $PKGNAME >> log
    for LINE in $(find $PKGNAME-*); do
        echo "$LINE $PKGNAME"
    done
done