debian man page for dctrl2xml

dctrl2xml(1)															      dctrl2xml(1)

NAME
       dctrl2xml - Debian control data to XML converter

SYNOPSIS
       dctrl2xml [-x | -j] [-f FILE]

DESCRIPTION
       dctrl2xml is a tool that converts Debian control data into an XML representation. It can be used to convert data which is normally found in
       debian/control, .changes, .dsc, Packages, Sources, and similar files to XML.

       For most fields dctrl2xml just uses the field name as element name and the field data as element content. For other fields, such as package
       interrelationship  fields  (Depends,  Build-Depends,  etc.)  or the Files field in .changes or Sources files, dctrl2xml additionally parses
       their field data to represent it in a more fine-structured form.

OPTIONS
       For a full summary of options, run dctrl2xml --help.

       --version
	      Show dctrl2xml's version number.

       -h, --help
	      Show help about options.

       -f FILE, --file=FILE
	      Read Debian control data from file FILE instead of standard input.  FILE can be either a plain text file or a  gzip,  bzip2  or  ZIP
	      file.

       -x, --xml
	      Output Debian control data as XML (default).

       -j, --json
	      Output Debian control data as JSON.

EXAMPLES
       dctrl2xml -f /var/lib/dpkg/available
	      Convert the whole dpkg(1) available file to XML and print it to standard output. This is a typical stress test for dctrl2xml.

       apt-cache show hello build-essential | dctrl2xml
	      Convert  the package records of the hello and build-essential packages to XML and print it to standard output. This is an example of
	      how dctrl2xml can be used in pipes where it reads the control data from standard input.

       apt-cache showsrc hello | dctrl2xml | xmllint --format -
	      This is similar to the above example, except that the xmllint(1) tool (which is in the libxml2-utils Debian package) is used to  re-
	      format  and  reindent dctrl2xml's output to make it more human readable and that the source package records of the hello package are
	      used.

       apt-cache showsrc hello | dctrl2xml -j
	      In this example hello's source package record is printed as JSON instead of XML.

SEE ALSO
       deb-control(5)

AUTHOR
       Written by Frank S. Thomas <fst@debian.org>.

								  20 August 2010						      dctrl2xml(1)