Is there an apt command to download a deb file from the repositories to the current directory?
- by Lekensteyn
I am often interested in the installation triggers (postinst, postrm) or certain parts of packages (like /usr/share and /etc). Currently, I am running the next command to retrieve the source code:
apt-get source [package-name]
The downside is, this file is often much bigger than the binary package and does not reflect the installation tree.
Right now, I am downloading the packages through http://packages.ubuntu.com/:
Search for [package-name]
Select the package
Click on amd64/i386 for download
Download the actual file
This takes too long for me and as someone who really likes the shell, I would like to do something like the next (imaginary) command:
apt-get get-deb-file [package-name]
I could not find something like this in the apt-get manual page. The most close I found was the --download-only switch, but this puts the package in /var/cache/apt/archives (which requires root permissions) and not in the current directory.