apt-file-from-installed

apt-file-from-installed generates a contents file for apt-file 2.x from the currently installed packages, rather than downloading. Read more in the online man page (4k, html).

apt-file version 3 has incompatible config and apt-file-from-installed doesn't work. The symptom is "Can't read configuration in /etc/apt/apt-file.conf: No such file or directory". Does apt-file 3 look at local package contents itself anyway?

apt-file-from-installed is free software (free as in freedom), published under the terms of the GNU General Public License (v3 or up). Download version 8 here and chmod it to executable for use:

apt-file-from-installed (8k, and sig)

Or for ease of install/remove as a .deb, and its source.

apt-file-from-installed_8-0.1_all.deb (8k, and sig)
apt-file-from-installed-8.tar.gz (24k, and sig)

The sig files are Gnu PG ascii armoured signatures, generated from my key. There's a SIGNATURE file inside the .tar.gz for cpansign too.

The main use is give dh-make-perl an apt-file contents to look at (for Perl module-to-package name lookup) without a huge download and with your locally installed packages included (those installed from .debs directly, rather than out of a private repo). dh-make-perl's module-to-package algorithm is a shifting target; each release seems to do more to prevent local packages.

Incidentally, the operative part of the script is the dpkg | sed | gzip pipeline. The surrounding verbiage is merely some attempts to accurately follow apt and apt-file's various configurations.