======manpage_extraction====== #!/bin/bash set -e DESTDIR="$1" shift if [ ! -d "$DESTDIR" ]; then echo "Extract documentation to which directory?" >&2 exit 1 fi TEMPDIR=`mktemp -d -t doc-XXXXXX` while [ -f "$1" ]; do DEB="$1" shift echo "Checking $DEB ..." dpkg-deb -c "$DEB" | egrep ' \./usr/share/man/man.' >/dev/null || { echo "Skipping $DEB (no man pages)" continue } echo "Extracting $DEB ..." dpkg-deb -x "$DEB" "$TEMPDIR" (cd "$TEMPDIR"/usr/share/man && find . | cpio -pumd "$DESTDIR") echo "Cleaning up $DEB ..." (cd "$TEMPDIR" && rm -rf *) done rm -rf "$TEMPDIR" This can be used to extract manpages from a Debian file repository. For example: find /mirrors/ubuntu/pool -name '*_i386.deb' -o -name '*_all.deb' | xargs bin/yank-docs /home/kees/all-man