Version: unspecified (using KDE 4.4.5) OS: Linux ark should extract a debian archive as it was before making the package. For e.g. the DEBIAN folder should be extracted and along side it, the actual contents in the package as they were merged with / This is what File roller does. Reproducible: Didn't try
Hmm, I just downloaded http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/unzip/download for testing, and both Ark and File Roller show 'control.tar.gz', 'data.tar.gz' and 'debian-binary'. What does File Roller show you when you open this archive?
Actually I'm talking about the 'extract here' in the gnome context menu. I'm not sure if it's powered by file roller. This 'extract here' extracts the archive along with it's contents.
Well, using 'file-roller --extract-here' did not provide the results you described, so GNOME's behaviour is probably independent from file-roller. Anyway, what you mean is that ultimately Ark should display a deb file as it actually is (ie the control.tar.gz, data.tar.gz and debian-binary files), but actually extract the contents of data.tar.gz?
You make a Debian archive by pointing it to a directory which contains all the data (with the corresponding folder as in /), e.g - dpkg --build debian_package final_package.deb The contents of debian_package might be - usr /home /var /usr/bin etc... i.e files contained in those sub directories. but one folder is mandatory - DEBIAN This contains info about the Debian archive. If ark extracts the archive in a format as it was in the debian_package directory, it will ease the job of package maintainers.
Well, final_package.deb is actually just an ar archive with those 3 files I mentioned in comment #3 -- the 'debian' directory is control.tar.gz, and the files themselves are in data.tar.gz. It might be nice to view/extract those two files automatically and see their contents, but not showing the actual file contents at all does not sound nice to me. What is your position on this?
Yup. So there should be 2 ways by which you can extract a Debian archive...
Well, for now I'm marking it as NEW. However, I think the best place for this is a deb kioslave, which may even exist or be in the works by someone from Debian or Ubuntu. Let's see.