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19

This command can only list contents of installed packages, 

dpkg -L PACKAGENAME

but how to list contents of a non-installed package, to preview/examine the package?

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3 Answers

up vote 55 down vote accepted

dpkg -c acts as a front-end to dpkg-deb. As such, it works directly with package archives (.deb files).

To work directly with package names rather than package files you can use apt-file.

apt-file list package_name

This works for installed and not installed packages.

apt-file package needs to be installed to use the command.

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7  
apt-file also needs to be updated (sudo apt-file update), and only lists contents for packages in your already-configured Apt repositories. – quack quixote Jan 28 '10 at 22:54
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@quackquixote: In Ubuntu 12.04 it's automatic – confiq May 13 '12 at 10:43
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dpkg -c nice! – d-_-b Oct 15 '12 at 9:57
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The Apt-file answer assumes that your package is coming from a configured repository instead of a .deb file you have downloaded separately. The original question is ambiguous though. – Zoredache Jan 15 at 23:27
up vote 31 down vote

Use --contents instead of -L:

dpkg --contents PACKAGENAME

When used in this manner, dpkg acts as a front-end to dpkg-deb, so use man dpkg-deb to see all the options.

You can also use an archive browser to view the package contents.

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This doesn't work unless I installed it first and then uninstall it. – Xiè Jìléi Dec 15 '09 at 14:07
it should work fine if you give it a .deb file as an argument (instead of PACKAGENAME, give it PACKAGE-DEB-FILE). – quack quixote Dec 15 '09 at 22:11
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This answer is wrong. You have to have the package installed first. If you don't have it installed, then you don't have a .deb file. – Neil May 1 '12 at 2:14
This command works for me. For example, I downloaded google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb from Google. Then issued the command: dpkg --contents google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb and it listed out all the files it will install (mostly to /opt/google/chrome), none of which are currently installed on my system as I type this. (I'm running Xubuntu 11.10 if that matters.) – midpeter444 Aug 4 '12 at 21:11
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@Neil, the answer is not wrong. Just because you have a deb file, doesn't mean it's installed. apt-file needs the entire build-essential package. O.O – d-_-b Oct 15 '12 at 10:00
up vote 6 down vote

dpkg --contents will let you look at the uninstalled package. If the .deb is not on your system yet, do 

apt-get --download-only install pkgname

The package will get downloaded to /var/cache/apt/archives but not installed.

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Can I just list the contents without download it? If I'm on a very slow connection, and if the package is too large to download. If the .deb file has a file header where contents list goes, I guess download the whole package maybe not necessary. Is this possible? – Xiè Jìléi Dec 15 '09 at 14:06

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