USCAN(1) General Commands Manual USCAN(1)
NAME
uscan - scan/watch upstream sources for new releases of software
SYNOPSIS
uscan [options] [path-to-debian-source-packages ...]
DESCRIPTION
uscan scans the given directories (or the current directory if none are specified) and all of their subdirectories for packages containing
a control file debian/watch. Parameters are then read from those control files and upstream ftp or http sites are inspected for newly
available updates (as compared with the upstream version number retrieved from the debian/changelog file in the same directory). The new-
est updates are retrieved (as determined by their version numbers) and if specified in the watch file, a program may then be executed on
the newly downloaded source.
The traditional debian/watch files can still be used, but the current format offers both simpler and more flexible services. We do not
describe the old format here; for their documentation, see the source code for uscan.
FORMAT of debian/watch files
The following demonstrates the type of entries which can appear in a debian/watch file. Obviously, not all of these would appear in one
such file; usually, one would have one line for the current package.
# format version number, currently 3; this line is compulsory!
version=3
# Line continuations are performed with
# This is the format for an FTP site:
# Full-site-with-pattern [Version [Action]]
ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/web/c_cpp/cweb/cweb-(.+).tar.gz
debian uupdate
# This is the format for an FTP site with regex special characters in
# the filename part
ftp://ftp.worldforge.org/pub/worldforge/libs/Atlas-C++/transitional/Atlas-C++-(.+).tar.gz
# This is the format for an FTP site with directory pattern matching
ftp://ftp.nessus.org/pub/nessus/nessus-([d.]+)/src/nessus-core-([d.]+).tar.gz
# This can be used if you want to override the PASV setting
# for a specific site
# opts=pasv ftp://.../...
# This is one format for an HTTP site, which is the same
# as the FTP format. uscan starts by downloading the homepage,
# obtained by removing the last component of the URL; in this case,
# http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Text/
http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Text/Text-CSV_XS-(.+).tar.gz
# This is a variant HTTP format which allows direct specification of
# the homepage:
# Homepage Pattern [Version [Action]]
http://www.dataway.ch/~lukasl/amph/amph.html
files/amphetamine-([d.]*).tar.bz2
# This one shows that recursive directory scanning works, in either of
# two forms, as long as the website can handle requests of the form
# http://site/inter/mediate/dir/
http://tmrc.mit.edu/mirror/twisted/Twisted/(d.d)/
Twisted-([d.]*).tar.bz2
http://tmrc.mit.edu/mirror/twisted/Twisted/(d.d)/Twisted-([d.]*).tar.bz2
# qa.debian.org runs a redirector which allows a simpler form of URL
# for SourceForge based projects. The format below will automatically
# be rewritten to use the redirector.
http://sf.net/audacity/audacity-src-(.+).tar.gz
# githubredir.debian.net is a redirector for GitHub projects
# It can be used as following:
http://githubredir.debian.net/github/<user>/<project> (.+).tar.gz
# This is the format for a site which has funny version numbers;
# the parenthesised groups will be joined with dots to make a
# sanitised version number
http://www.site.com/pub/foobar/foobar_v(d+)_(d+).tar.gz
# This is another way of handling site with funny version numbers,
# this time using mangling. (Note that multiple groups will be
# concatenated before mangling is performed, and that mangling will
# only be performed on the basename version number, not any path
# version numbers.)
opts="uversionmangle=s/^/0.0./"
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/ALPHA/wine/development/Wine-(.+).tar.gz
# Similarly, the upstream part of the Debian version number can be
# mangled:
opts=dversionmangle=s/.dfsg.d+$//
http://some.site.org/some/path/foobar-(.+).tar.gz
# The filename is found by taking the last component of the URL and
# removing everything after any '?'. If this would not make a usable
# filename, use filenamemangle. For example,
# <A href="http://foo.bar.org/download/?path=&download=foo-0.1.1.tar.gz">
# could be handled as:
# opts=filenamemangle=s/.*=(.*)/$1/
# http://foo.bar.org/download/?path=&download=foo-(.+).tar.gz
#
# <A href="http://foo.bar.org/download/?path=&download_version=0.1.1">
# could be handled as:
# opts=filenamemangle=s/.*=(.*)/foo-$1.tar.gz/
# http://foo.bar.org/download/?path=&download_version=(.+)
# The option downloadurlmangle can be used to mangle the URL of the file
# to download. This can only be used with http:// URLs. This may be
# necessary if the link given on the web page needs to be transformed in
# some way into one which will work automatically, for example:
# opts=downloadurlmangle=s/prdownload/download/
# http://developer.berlios.de/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2051
# http://prdownload.berlios.de/softdevice/vdr-softdevice-(.+).tgz
Comment lines may be introduced with a `#' character. Continuation lines may be indicated by terminating a line with a backslash charac-
ter.
The first (non-comment) line of the file must begin `version=3'. This allows for future extensions without having to change the name of
the file.
There are two possibilities for the syntax of an HTTP watch file line, and only one for an FTP line. We begin with the common (and sim-
pler) format. We describe the optional opts=... first field below, and ignore it in what follows.
The first field gives the full pattern of URLs being searched for. In the case of an FTP site, the directory listing for the requested
directory will be requested and this will be scanned for files matching the basename (everything after the trailing `/'). In the case of
an HTTP site, the URL obtained by stripping everything after the trailing slash will be downloaded and searched for hrefs (links of the
form <a href=...>) to either the full URL pattern given, or to the absolute part (everything without the http://host.name/ part), or to the
basename (just the part after the final `/'). Everything up to the final slash is taken as a verbatim URL, as long as there are no paren-
theses (`(' and ')') in this part of the URL: if it does, the directory name will be matched in the same way as the final component of the
URL as described below. (Note that regex metacharacters such as `+' are regarded literally unless they are in a path component containing
parentheses; see the Atlas-C++ example above. Also, the parentheses must match within each path component.)
The pattern (after the final slash) is a Perl regexp (see perlre(1) for details of these). You need to make the pattern so tight that it
matches only the upstream software you are interested in and nothing else. Also, the pattern will be anchored at the beginning and at the
end, so it must match the full filename. (Note that for HTTP URLs, the href may include the absolute path or full site and path and still
be accepted.) The pattern must contain at least one Perl group as explained in the next paragraph.
Having got a list of `files' matching the pattern, their version numbers are extracted by treating the part matching the Perl regexp
groups, demarcated by `(...)', joining them with `.' as a separator, and using the result as the version number of the file. The version
number will then be mangled if required by the uversionmangle option described below. Finally, the file versions are then compared to find
the one with the greatest version number, as determined by dpkg --compare-versions. Note that if you need Perl groups which are not to be
used in the version number, either use `(?:...)' or use the uversionmangle option to clean up the mess!
The current (upstream) version can be specified as the second parameter in the watch file line. If this is debian or absent, then the cur-
rent Debian version (as determined by debian/changelog) is used to determine the current upstream version. The current upstream version
may also be specified by the command-line option --upstream-version, which specifies the upstream version number of the currently installed
package (i.e., the Debian version number without epoch and Debian revision). The upstream version number will then be mangled using the
dversionmangle option if one is specified, as described below. If the newest version available is newer than the current version, then it
is downloaded into the parent directory, unless the --report or --report-status option has been used. Once the file has been downloaded,
then a symlink to the file is made from <package>_<version>.orig.tar.{gz|bz2|lzma|xz} as described by the help for the --symlink option.
Finally, if a third parameter (an action) is given in the watch file line, this is taken as the name of a command, and the command
command --upstream-version version filename
is executed, using either the original file or the symlink name. A common such command would be uupdate(1). (Note that the calling syntax
was slightly different when using watch file without a `version=...' line; there the command executed was `command filename version'.) If
the command is uupdate, then the --no-symlink option is given to uupdate as a first option, since any requested symlinking will already be
done by uscan.
The alternative version of the watch file syntax for HTTP URLs is as follows. The first field is a homepage which should be downloaded and
then searched for hrefs matching the pattern given in the second field. (Again, this pattern will be anchored at the beginning and the
end, so it must match the whole href. If you want to match just the basename of the href, you can use a pattern like
".*/name-(.+).tar.gz" if you know that there is a full URL, or better still: "(?:.*/)?name-(.+).tar.gz" if there may or may not be.
Note the use of (?:...) to avoid making a backreference.) If any of the hrefs in the homepage which match the (anchored) pattern are rela-
tive URLs, they will be taken as being relative to the base URL of the homepage (i.e., with everything after the trailing slash removed),
or relative to the base URL specified in the homepage itself with a <base href="..."> tag. The third and fourth fields are the version
number and action fields as before.
PER-SITE OPTIONS
A watch file line may be prefixed with `opts=options', where options is a comma-separated list of options. The whole options string may be
enclosed in double quotes, which is necessary if options contains any spaces. The recognised options are as follows:
active and passive (or pasv)
If used on an FTP line, these override the choice of whether to use PASV mode or not, and force the use of the specified mode for
this site.
uversionmangle=rules
This is used to mangle the upstream version number as matched by the ftp://... or http:// rules as follows. First, the rules string
is split into multiple rules at every `;'. Then the upstream version number is mangled by applying rule to the version, in a simi-
lar way to executing the Perl command:
$version =~ rule;
for each rule. Thus, suitable rules might be `s/^/0./' to prepend `0.' to the version number and `s/_/./g' to change underscores
into periods. Note that the rules string may not contain commas; this should not be a problem.
rule may only use the 's', 'tr' and 'y' operations. When the 's' operation is used, only the 'g', 'i' and 'x' flags are available
and rule may not contain any expressions which have the potential to execute code (i.e. the (?{}) and (??{}) constructs are not sup-
ported).
If the 's' operation is used, the replacement can contain backreferences to expressions within parenthesis in the matching regexp,
like `s/-alpha(d*)/.a$1/'. These backreferences must use the `$1' syntax, as the `1' syntax is not supported.
dversionmangle=rules
This is used to mangle the Debian version number of the currently installed package in the same way as the uversionmangle option.
Thus, a suitable rule might be `s/.dfsg.d+$//' to remove a `.dfsg.1' suffix from the Debian version number, or to handle `.pre6'
type version numbers. Again, the rules string may not contain commas; this should not be a problem.
versionmangle=rules
This is a syntactic shorthand for uversionmangle=rules,dversionmangle=rules, applying the same rules to both the upstream and Debian
version numbers.
filenamemangle=rules
This is used to mangle the filename with which the downloaded file will be saved, and is parsed in the same way as the uversionman-
gle option. Examples of its use are given in the examples section above.
downloadurlmangle=rules
This is used to mangle the URL to be used for the download. The URL is first computed based on the homepage downloaded and the pat-
tern matched, then the version number is determined from this URL. Finally, any rules given by this option are applied before the
actual download attempt is made. An example of its use is given in the examples section above.
Directory name checking
Similarly to several other scripts in the devscripts package, uscan explores the requested directory trees looking for debian/changelog and
debian/watch files. As a safeguard against stray files causing potential problems, and in order to promote efficiency, it will examine the
name of the parent directory once it finds the debian/changelog file, and check that the directory name corresponds to the package name.
It will only attempt to download newer versions of the package and then perform any requested action if the directory name matches the
package name. Precisely how it does this is controlled by two configuration file variables DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_LEVEL and
DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_REGEX, and their corresponding command-line options --check-dirname-level and --check-dirname-regex.
DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_LEVEL can take the following values:
0 Never check the directory name.
1 Only check the directory name if we have had to change directory in our search for debian/changelog, that is, the directory contain-
ing debian/changelog is not the directory from which uscan was invoked. This is the default behaviour.
2 Always check the directory name.
The directory name is checked by testing whether the current directory name (as determined by pwd(1)) matches the regex given by the con-
figuration file option DEVSCRIPTS_CHECK_DIRNAME_REGEX or by the command line option --check-dirname-regex regex. Here regex is a Perl
regex (see perlre(3perl)), which will be anchored at the beginning and the end. If regex contains a '/', then it must match the full
directory path. If not, then it must match the full directory name. If regex contains the string 'PACKAGE', this will be replaced by the
source package name, as determined from the changelog. The default value for the regex is: 'PACKAGE(-.+)?', thus matching directory names
such as PACKAGE and PACKAGE-version.
EXAMPLE
This script will perform a fully automatic upstream update.
#!/bin/sh -e
# called with '--upstream-version' <version> <file>
uupdate "$@"
package=`dpkg-parsechangelog | sed -n 's/^Source: //p'`
cd ../$package-$2
debuild
Note that we don't call dupload or dput automatically, as the maintainer should perform sanity checks on the software before uploading it
to Debian.
OPTIONS
--report, --no-download
Only report about available newer versions but do not download anything.
--report-status
Report on the status of all packages, even those which are up-to-date, but do not download anything.
--download
Report and download. (This is the default behaviour.)
--destdir
Path of directory to which to download. If the specified path is not absolute, it will be relative to one of the current directory
or, if directory scanning is enabled, the package's source directory.
--force-download
Download upstream even if up to date (will not overwrite local files, however)
--pasv Force PASV mode for FTP connections.
--no-pasv
Do not use PASV mode for FTP connections.
--timeout N
Set timeout to N seconds (default 20 seconds).
--symlink
Make orig.tar.gz symlinks to any downloaded files if their extensions are .tar.gz or .tgz. This is also handled for orig.tar.bz2
(for upstream .tar.bz2, .tbz, and .tbz2), orig.tar.lzma (for upstream .tar.lzma, .tlz, .tlzm, and .tlzma), and orig.tar.xz (for
upstream .tar.xz and .txz). (This is the default behaviour.)
--rename
Instead of symlinking, rename the downloaded files to their Debian orig.tar.gz, orig.tar.bz2, orig.tar.lzma, or orig.tar.xz names as
described above.
--repack
After having downloaded an lzma tar, xz tar, bzip tar or zip archive, repack it to a gzip tar archive, which is still currently
required as a member of a Debian source package. Does nothing if the downloaded archive is not an lzma tar archive, xz tar archive,
bzip tar archive or a zip archive (i.e. it doesn't match a .tlz, .tlzm, .tlzma, .tar.lzma, .txz, .tar.xz, .tbz, .tbz2, .tar.bz2 or
.zip extension). The unzip package must be installed in order to repack .zip archives, the xz-utils package must be installed to
repack lzma or xz tar archives.
--no-symlink
Don't make these symlinks and don't rename the files.
--dehs Use an XML format for output, as required by the DEHS system.
--no-dehs
Use the traditional uscan output format. (This is the default behaviour.)
--package package
Specify the name of the package to check for rather than examining debian/changelog; this requires the --upstream-version (unless a
version is specified in the watch file) and --watchfile options as well. Furthermore, no directory scanning will be done and noth-
ing will be downloaded. This option is probably most useful in conjunction with the DEHS system (and --dehs).
--upstream-version upstream-version
Specify the current upstream version rather than examine the watch file or changelog to determine it. This is ignored if a direc-
tory scan is being performed and more than one watch file is found.
--watchfile watchfile
Specify the watchfile rather than perform a directory scan to determine it. If this option is used without --package, then uscan
must be called from within the Debian package source tree (so that debian/changelog can be found simply by stepping up through the
tree).
--download-version version
Specify the version which the upstream release must match in order to be considered, rather than using the release with the highest
version.
--download-current-version
Download the currently packaged version
--verbose
Give verbose output.
--no-verbose
Don't give verbose output. (This is the default behaviour.)
--debug
Dump the downloaded web pages to stdout for debugging your watch file.
--check-dirname-level N
See the above section Directory name checking for an explanation of this option.
--check-dirname-regex regex
See the above section Directory name checking for an explanation of this option.
--user-agent, --useragent
Override the default user agent header.
--no-conf, --noconf
Do not read any configuration files. This can only be used as the first option given on the command-line.
--help Give brief usage information.
--version
Display version information.
CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
The two configuration files /etc/devscripts.conf and ~/.devscripts are sourced by a shell in that order to set configuration variables.
These may be overridden by command line options. Environment variable settings are ignored for this purpose. If the first command line
option given is --noconf, then these files will not be read. The currently recognised variables are:
USCAN_DOWNLOAD
If this is set to no, then newer upstream files will not be downloaded; this is equivalent to the --report or --no-download options.
USCAN_PASV
If this is set to yes or no, this will force FTP connections to use PASV mode or not to, respectively. If this is set to default,
then Net::FTP(3) make the choice (primarily based on the FTP_PASSIVE environment variable).
USCAN_TIMEOUT
If set to a number N, then set the timeout to N seconds. This is equivalent to the --timeout option.
USCAN_SYMLINK
If this is set to no, then a pkg_version.orig.tar.{gz|bz2|lzma|xz} symlink will not be made (equivalent to the --no-symlink option).
If it is set to yes or symlink, then the symlinks will be made. If it is set to rename, then the files are renamed (equivalent to
the --rename option).
USCAN_DEHS_OUTPUT
If this is set to yes, then DEHS-style output will be used. This is equivalent to the --dehs option.
USCAN_VERBOSE
If this is set to yes, then verbose output will be given. This is equivalent to the --verbose option.
USCAN_USER_AGENT
If set, the specified user agent string will be used in place of the default. This is equivalent to the --user-agent option.
USCAN_DESTDIR
If set, the downloaded files will be placed in this directory. This is equivalent to the --destdir option.
USCAN_REPACK
If this is set to yes, then after having downloaded a bzip tar, lzma tar, xz tar, or zip archive, uscan will repack it to a gzip
tar. This is equivalent to the --repack option.
EXIT STATUS
The exit status gives some indication of whether a newer version was found or not; one is advised to read the output to determine exactly
what happened and whether there were any warnings to be noted.
0 Either --help or --version was used, or for some watch file which was examined, a newer upstream version was located.
1 No newer upstream versions were located for any of the watch files examined.
HISTORY AND UPGRADING
This section briefly describes the backwards-incompatible watch file features which have been added in each watch file version, and the
first version of the devscripts package which understood them.
Pre-version 2
The watch file syntax was significantly different in those days. Don't use it. If you are upgrading from a pre-version 2 watch
file, you are advised to read this manpage and to start from scratch.
Version 2
devscripts version 2.6.90: The first incarnation of the current style of watch files.
Version 3
devscripts version 2.8.12: Introduced the following: correct handling of regex special characters in the path part, directory/path
pattern matching, version number in several parts, version number mangling. Later versions have also introduced URL mangling.
If you are upgrading from version 2, the key incompatibility is if you have multiple groups in the pattern part; whereas only the
first one would be used in version 2, they will all be used in version 3. To avoid this behaviour, change the non-version-number
groups to be (?:...) instead of a plain (...) group.
SEE ALSO
dpkg(1), perlre(1), uupdate(1) and devscripts.conf(5).
AUTHOR
The original version of uscan was written by Christoph Lameter <clameter@debian.org>. Significant improvements, changes and bugfixes were
made by Julian Gilbey <jdg@debian.org>. HTTP support was added by Piotr Roszatycki <dexter@debian.org>. The program was rewritten in Perl
by Julian Gilbey.
DEBIAN
Debian Utilities USCAN(1)