.Dd May 27, 2005
.Os Ubuntu
.ds volume-operating-system Ubuntu
.Dt GERMINATE 1
.Sh NAME
.Nm germinate
.Nd expand dependencies in a list of seed packages
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl v
.Op Fl S Ar source
.Op Fl s Ar dist
.Op Fl m Ar mirror
.Op Fl d Ar dist Ns \&,...
.Op Fl a Ar arch
.Op Fl c Ar component Ns \&,...
.Op Fl Fl vcs Ns = Ns Brq Li auto Ns | Ns Li bzr Ns | Ns Li git
.Op Fl Fl no\-rdepends
.Op Fl Fl no\-installer
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm
is a program to help with the maintenance of large software distributions.
It takes a list of seed packages and a mirror of the distribution, and
produces outputs with the seed packages and their dependencies and
build-dependencies expanded out in full.
.Ss Seeds
The contents of the Ubuntu distribution, and others, are managed by means of
.Em seeds .
At their simplest, these are lists of packages which are considered
important to have in the main component of the distribution, without
explicitly listing all their dependencies and build-dependencies.
.Pp
Seed lists are typically divided up by category: a
.Li base
or
.Li minimal
seed might list the core set of packages required to make the system run at
all, while a
.Li desktop
seed might list the set of packages installed as part of a default desktop
installation.
.Nm
takes these seeds, adds their dependency trees, and produces an
.Em output
for each seed which contains a dependency-expanded list of package names.
These outputs may be handed on to archive maintenance or CD-building tools.
.Pp
Some seeds may
.Em inherit
from other seeds: they rely on those seeds to be installed.
For example, a
.Li desktop
seed will typically inherit from a
.Li minimal
seed.
.Nm
understands these inheritance relationships.
If a package in the
.Li desktop
seed depends on
.Sq foo ,
but
.Sq foo
is already part of the
.Li minimal
seed or dependency list, then
.Sq foo
will not be added to the
.Li desktop
output.
.Pp
Seeds are stored in text files downloaded from a given URL.
Lines not beginning with
.Sq "\ *\ "
(wiki-style list markup) are ignored.
.Pp
Seed entries may simply consist of a package name, or may include any of the
following special syntax:
.Bl -tag -width 6n
.It %
Seed entries beginning with
.Sq %
expand to all binaries from the given source package.
.It ...|...
Seed entries may list alternatives to the seeded package to allow metapackages
to list them, and users to use those alternatives without having to remove the
metapackages.
.It [...]
Seed entries may be followed with
.Sq " [" Ns Ar arch1 Ar arch2 ... Ns \&]
to indicate that they should only be used on the given architectures, or with
.Sq " [!" Ns Ar arch1 No ! Ns Ar arch2 ... Ns \&]
to indicate that they should not be used on the given architectures.
.It (...)
Seed entries in parentheses indicate that the seed should be treated as a
recommendation of metapackages generated from this seed, rather than as a
dependency.
.It !
Seed entries beginning with
.Sq \&!
cause the given package to be blocklisted from the given seed and any seeds
from which it inherits; this may be followed by
.Sq %
as above to blocklist all binaries from the given source package.
Note that this may result in uninstallable packages whose dependencies have
been blocklisted, so use this feature sparingly.
The purpose of a blocklist is to make it obvious when a package that is not
supposed to be installed ends up in
.Nm Ns 's
output, so that package relationships can be fixed to stop that happening.
It is not intended for the purpose of working around buggy package
relationships, and attempts to do so will not work because
.Ic apt
has no way to know about blocklist entries in seeds.
.It snap:name
Seed entries beginning with
.Sq snap:
are
.Em snap
packages.
These are different from
.Em deb
packages in that they do not have (build-)dependencies, cannot be
recommended, and do not end up in any resulting metapackages.
(If you try to recommend a snap package, it will be ignored completely.)
Snaps specified in seeds will be output in a
.Em .snaps
file named after the corresponding seed, as software processing the output of
.Nm
will typically need to treat snaps differently from debs.
.Nm
will not check remotely to see if a given snap is available, therefore seeds
are expected to explicitly list all architectures a snap is to be seeded on.
.Sq snap:
entries can also be suffixed with "/classic" to indicate that the snaps need to
be installed with classic confinement on end-user systems.
.It key: value
Some seeds also contain headers at the top of the file, in
.Dq key: value
format.
For the most part, these are not parsed by
.Nm
itself.
The Ubuntu
.Ic tasksel
package uses keys beginning with
.Sq Task\-
to define fields of similar names in its
.Pa .desc
files.
.Xr germinate\-update\-metapackage 1
uses some of these headers to reduce the need for fragile configuration;
see its documentation for further details.
.El
.Pp
A
.Pa STRUCTURE
file alongside the seeds lists their inheritance relationships.
It may also include lines beginning with
.Sq include ,
causing other collections of seeds to be included as if they were part of
the collection currently being germinated, or lines beginning with
.Sq feature ,
which set flags for the processing of seeds.
Features may also be set on a per-seed basis using lines beginning with
.Sq "\ *\ Feature:"
in the seed file.
.Pp
The following flags are currently defined:
.Bl -tag -width 6n
.It follow\-build\-depends
Follow Build-Depends fields.
This flag is only recognised in individual seed files, not in
.Pa STRUCTURE .
.It follow\-build\-depends\-all
Follow Build-Depends fields for Architecture: all packages.
This has no effect if
.Li no\-follow\-build\-depends
is set.
.It follow\-recommends
Treat Recommends fields as if they were Depends.
.It no\-follow\-build\-depends
Do not follow Build-Depends fields.
.It no\-follow\-build\-depends\-all
Do not follow Build-Depends fields for Architecture: all packages, even
though Build-Depends are followed for other packages.
.It no\-follow\-recommends
Do not treat Recommends fields as if they were Depends.
This flag is only recognised in individual seed files, not in
.Pa STRUCTURE .
.El
.Ss Build-dependencies and Sq supported
There is typically no need for a default desktop installation to contain all
the compilers and development libraries needed to build itself from source;
if nothing else, it would consume much more space.
Nevertheless, it is normally a requirement for the maintainers of a
distribution to support all the packages necessary to build that
distribution.
.Pp
.Nm
therefore does not add all the packages that result from following
build-dependencies of seed packages and of their dependencies (the
.Dq build-dependency tree )
to every output, unless they are also in the seed or in the dependency list.
Instead, it adds them to the output for the last seed in the
.Pa STRUCTURE
file, conventionally called
.Li supported .
.Pp
Like any other seed, the supported seed may contain its own list of
packages.
It is common to provide support for many software packages which are not in
the default installation, such as debugging libraries, optimised kernels,
alternative language support, and the like.
.Ss Outputs
The output files are named after the seed to which they correspond.
An additional output file is needed for supported, namely
.Sq supported+build\-depends ,
which contains the supported list and the build-depends lists of the other
seeds all joined together.
An
.Sq all
output is produced to represent the entire archive.
.Pp
Some other files are produced for occasional use by experts.
See the
.Pa README
file for full details on these.
.Sh OPTIONS
.Bl -tag -width 4n
.It Xo Fl v ,
.Fl Fl verbose
.Xc
Be more verbose when processing seeds.
.It Xo Fl S ,
.Fl Fl seed\-source Ar source Ns \&,...
.Xc
Fetch seeds from the specified sources.
The default is
.Pa https://ubuntu-archive-team.ubuntu.com/seeds/ ,
or
.Pa http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu-seeds/
if the
.Fl Fl vcs Ns = Ns bzr
option is used, or
.Pa git://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu-seeds/+git/
if the
.Fl Fl vcs Ns = Ns git
option is used.
You may use
.Pa file://
URLs here to fetch seeds from the local file system; for example, if your
seeds are stored in
.Pa /home/username/seeds/debian.unstable ,
then you would use the options
.Fl S Ar file:///home/username/seeds/
.Fl s Ar debian.unstable .
.It Xo Fl s ,
.Fl Fl seed\-dist Ar dist
.Xc
Fetch seeds for distribution
.Ar dist .
The default is
.Li ubuntu.questing .
.Pp
When fetching seeds from git, the part after the rightmost
.Sq \&.
character, if any, is treated as the branch name to check out; this rather
strange style is for backward compatibility.
.It Xo Fl m ,
.Fl Fl mirror Ar mirror
.Xc
Get package lists from
.Ar mirror .
The default is
.Pa http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ .
May be supplied multiple times; the newest version of each package across
all archives will win.
.It Fl Fl source\-mirror Ar mirror
Get source package lists from
.Ar mirror .
The default is to use package lists mirrors.
May be supplied multiple times; the newest version of each source package
across all archives will win.
.It Xo Fl d ,
.Fl Fl dist Ar dist Ns \&,...
.Xc
Operate on the specified distributions.
The default is
.Li questing .
Listing multiple distributions may be useful, for example, when examining
both a released distribution and its security updates.
.It Xo Fl a ,
.Fl Fl arch Ar arch
.Xc
Operate on architecture
.Ar arch .
The default is
.Li amd64 .
.It Xo Fl c ,
.Fl Fl components Ar component Ns \&,...
.Xc
Operate on the specified components.
The default is
.Li main .
.It Xo Fl C ,
.Fl Fl apt-config Ar conf
.Xc
Use apt with APT_CONFIG set to the supplied value to find the
package and source indices to operate on. Overrides any values passed
for
.Fl Fl mirror ,
.Fl Fl source-mirror ,
.Fl Fl dist , or
.Fl Fl components .
.It Fl Fl vcs Ns = Ns Brq Li auto Ns | Ns Li bzr Ns | Ns Li git
Check out seeds from a version control system rather than fetching them
directly from a URL.
Requires
.Ic bzr
or
.Ic git ,
as appropriate, to be installed.
For
.Ic bzr ,
use the branch found at
.Ar seed\-source Ns / Ns Ar seed\-dist ;
for
.Ic git ,
remove the part after the rightmost
.Sq \&.
character of
.Ar seed\-dist
and use it as the branch name to check out from
.Ar seed\-source Ns / Ns Ar remainder\-of\-seed\-dist .
For
.Ic auto ,
guess the version control system to use from
.Ar seed\-source
(trying both in ambiguous cases) and then proceed as above.
.It Fl Fl bzr
Check out seeds from the
.Ic bzr
branch found at
.Ar seed\-source Ns / Ns Ar seed\-dist
rather than fetching them directly from a URL.
Requires
.Ic bzr
to be installed.
This option is deprecated and is retained for backward compatibility; use
.Fl Fl vcs Ns = Ns bzr
instead.
.It Fl Fl no\-rdepends
Disable reverse-dependency calculations.
These calculations cause a large number of small files to be written out in
the
.Pa rdepends/
directory, and may take some time.
.It Fl Fl no\-installer
Do not consider debian-installer udeb packages.
While generally not the desired outcome, sometimes you might wish to omit consideration of installer packages when processing your seeds, perhaps if sending the output directly to the package manager on an already-installed system.
.It Fl Fl seed\-packages Ar parent Ns / Ns Ar pkg Ns \&,...
Treat each
.Ar pkg
as a seed by itself, inheriting from
.Ar parent
(i.e. assuming that all packages in the
.Ar parent
seed are already installed while calculating the additional dependencies of
.Ar pkg ) .
This allows the use of
.Nm
to calculate the dependencies of individual extra packages.
For example,
.Fl Fl seed\-packages Ar desktop Ns / Ns Ar epiphany\-browser
will create an
.Pa epiphany\-browser
output file listing the additional packages that need to be installed over
and above the
.Ar desktop
seed in order to install
.Ar epiphany\-browser .
.It Fl Fl always\-follow\-build\-depends
Always follow Build-Depends in all seeds, regardless of seed feature flags.
.El
.Sh BUGS
The wiki-style markup in seeds was inherited from an early implementation,
and is a wart.
.Pp
.Nm
can sometimes be confused by complicated situations involving the order in
which it encounters dependencies on virtual packages.
Explicit entries in seeds may be required to work around this.
.Pp
Handling of installer packages (udebs) is complicated, poorly documented,
and doesn't always work quite right: in particular, packages aren't demoted
to the supported seed when they should be.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Scott James Remnant Aq scott@canonical.com
.An Colin Watson Aq cjwatson@canonical.com
.Pp
.An -nosplit
.Nm
is copyright \(co 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
.An Canonical Ltd .
See the GNU General Public License version 2 or later for copying
conditions.
A copy of the GNU General Public License is available in
.Pa /usr/share/common\-licenses/GPL .