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I am a newbie in linux and using ubuntu as my desktop os. Most of the time I feel the need to look at the code of the utility like ls, rm etc. Can anyone tell me how to get the code for these utilities.

Currently I am looking for the implementation of ssh-copy-id utility.

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You can fetch the source of a package with:

apt-get source [package]

Make sure you have the deb-src lines in /etc/apt/sources.list generally, copying the deb lines and changing deb to deb-src is enough.

If you don't know the name of the package with the file in question, you can get that info with apt-file. However, I can't remember how off the top of my head. I recommend reading the docs. :)

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  • Thanks, that was helpful. But I have one doubt, I want to retrieve the code of ssh-copy-id, the command exists but apt-get source ssh-copy-id fails to find the code. Any help would be appreciated.
    – hue
    Commented Apr 20, 2011 at 6:07
  • ssh-copy-id is the name of the command, not the name of the package.I have updated my answer.
    – Richo
    Commented Apr 20, 2011 at 6:39
  • ssh-copy-id is shell script. It is it's source code :)
    – Marko Kevac
    Commented Apr 21, 2011 at 7:54
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First use dpkg -S to find what package the binary belongs to e.g:

dpkg -S /bin/ls

this will output a line like

coreutils: /bin/ls

This means that coreutils is the package that /bin/ls belongs to. Now use apt-get to fetch source of that package

sudo apt-get source coreutils
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