Depinspect

Overview

Depinspect is an utility that offers an abstraction layer which simplifies the retrieval of package-related information across different distributions and architectures.

Project structure

Below is the default project structure.

depinspect/
├── depinspect
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── cli.py               # CLI implementation
│   ├── constants.py         # Constant values used throughout the project
│   ├── files.py             # File-related operations
│   ├── helper.py            # Utility functions
│   ├── printer.py           # Module responsible for printing information to the console
│   └── validator.py         # Input validation functions
│   ├── archives
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── extractor.py     # Module for extracting content from archives
│   │   └── fetcher.py       # Module for fetching archives
│   ├── database
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── database.py      # Database operations
│   │   ├── fedora/          # Directory for Fedora sqlite databases
│   │   └── ubuntu/          # Directory for Ubuntu sqlite databases
│   ├── distributions
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── fedora.py        # Module describing Fedora-specific class
│   │   ├── ubuntu.py        # Module describing Ubuntu-specific class
│   │   ├── loader.py        # Module for deserializing distribution-specific information
│   │   ├── mapping.py       # Module for mapping distribution name to a defined class
│   │   └── package.py       # Module describing Package interface
├── tests
│   └── ...
├── poetry.lock              # Dependency lock file generated by Poetry
├── pyproject.toml           # Poetry configuration file specifying project metadata 
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

Features

• Data Aggregation: Gathers information about packages from multiple distributions and their corresponding releases.

• Unified Access: Provides a streamlined and unified access point for stored metadata.

• Modular Architecture: Employs a modular design for simpler extendability, allowing easy integration of new features.

• CLI Support: Includes a Command-Line Interface (CLI) for a quick overview of divergent dependencies and other relevant information.

Table of contents

• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
• Usage
  • update
  • diff
  • list-all
  • find-divergent
• Examples
• Licenses

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• git
• Python 3.10+ with pip 19.0+
• pipx - to install and run Python applications in isolated environments

Installation

Open the terminal and follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone git@github.com:artem-burashnikov/depinspect.git

2. Navigate to the project root:

   cd depinspect

3. Install Poetry in an isolated environment with:

   pipx install poetry

   pipx can also run Poetry from a temporary environment without installing it explicitly. See pipx documentation for details.

4. Install all required dependencies with:

   Note: Running the command will automatically create a virtual environment and install all dependencies in an isolated manner. For details see Poetry documentation.

   poetry install

5. After the installation is complete, you can use the tool by running this command from within a virtual environment:

   depinspect [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

6. Make sure to load the initial metadata before querying with:

   depinspect update

Usage

Tool command line has the following interface:

Usage: depinspect [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  diff            Compare two packages.
  find-divergent  List all packages that have divergent dependencies.
  list-all        List stored architectures and packages for a given distro.
  update          Update metadata stored in databases.

For any command the --help option is available and prints the synopsis. The specific options are described below.

depinspect update

Metadata is stored in SQlite databases.

In order to refresh the information, depinspect update can be manually called.

The command have to also be called to initialize databases when using the tool for the first time.

depinspect diff

Find a difference and similarities in dependencies of two packages. This command requires two sets of parameters each under -p flag to be specified.

Options:

• -p <TEXT TEXT TEXT>

  Flag accepts distribution, architecture and name parameters in that specific order. This is a required option. Two such options need to be specified for invocation. See examples for usage.

depinspect list-all

This command outputs the list of distinct architctures and package names for a specified distribution.

Options:

• --distro

  The choice of one of currently supported distributions. This is a required option. You can see the list of currently supported distributions by runnig

  depinspect list-all --help

depinspect find-divergent

For a specified distribution and two architectures this command lists all packages that have divergent dependencies between those architectures.

Options:

• --distro

  Same as in depinspect list-all.

• --arch

  Two supported architectures need to be specified under this flag. This is a required option. You can see the list of currently supported architectures by runnig.

  depinspect find-divergent --help

  See examples for usage.

Examples

Below are common use cases.

Initialize or update the metadata in databases

The metadata is stored in SQLite databases which need to be initialized befora the queries will yield any significant results. Updates don't start automatically, so if you don't see any output try running the command first. You can start the update with:

depinspect update

List stored metadata

It is helpful to see the list of available architectures and package names stored in the database for a particular distribution. The following command outputs and stores the information for ubuntu in a file called available_data.txt:

depinspect list-all --distro=ubuntu > ubuntu_available_data.txt

Find differnces and similarities between two packages

By running

depinspect diff -p ubuntu i386 apt -p ubuntu amd64 apt

You get the following output:

These dependencies are present in both:
ubuntu - i386 - apt
ubuntu - amd64 - apt
================================================================================
adduser
gpgv | gpgv2 | gpgv1
libapt-pkg6.0 (>= 2.4.5)
libc6 (>= 2.34)
libgnutls30 (>= 3.7.0)
libseccomp2 (>= 2.4.2)
libstdc++6 (>= 11)
libsystemd0
ubuntu-keyring

These dependencies are exclusive to:
ubuntu - i386 - apt
================================================================================
libgcc-s1 (>= 4.2)

These dependencies are exclusive to:
ubuntu - amd64 - apt
================================================================================
libgcc-s1 (>= 3.3.1)

Which first tells you the shared dependencies for specified packages and then lists exclusive dependencies for each of them.

Find all packages with divergent dependencies

If you wish to find all packages for two architectures, whose dependenices have differences, you can do so with the following command:

depinspect find-divergent --distro=ubuntu --arch amd64 i386 > divergent_packages.txt

The result will be saved in divergent_packages.txt.

Licenses

The project is licensed under a BSD-3-Clause License.