= What Is A Package = A Debian package consists of both its contents (generally, the files and directories it includes) and some metadata. There are both source and binary packages, which we will discuss in detail. Binary packages have the file extension `.deb`, and are managed with the `dpkg` command. Given a .deb file, `dpkg -c` will list the files in the package, and `dpkg -I` will display the package's "control" information. This is the metadata mentioned above. Let's look at an example: {{{ $ dpkg -I xterm_271-1ubuntu2.1_amd64.deb new debian package, version 2.0. size 565320 bytes: control archive= 8406 bytes. 198 bytes, 6 lines conffiles 1690 bytes, 35 lines control 2031 bytes, 31 lines md5sums 22146 bytes, 665 lines * postinst #!/bin/sh 160 bytes, 5 lines * postrm #!/bin/sh 21414 bytes, 647 lines * prerm #!/bin/sh Package: xterm Version: 271-1ubuntu2.1 Architecture: amd64 Maintainer: Ubuntu X-SWAT Installed-Size: 1382 Depends: xbitmaps, libc6 (>= 2.15), libfontconfig1 (>= 2.8.0), libice6 (>= 1:1.0.0), libtinfo5, libutempter0 (>= 1.1.5), libx11-6, libxaw7, libxft2 (>> 2.1.1), libxmu6, libxt6 Recommends: x11-utils Suggests: xfonts-cyrillic Provides: x-terminal-emulator Section: x11 Priority: optional Multi-Arch: foreign Homepage: http://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.html Description: X terminal emulator xterm is a terminal emulator for the X Window System. It provides DEC VT102 and Tektronix 4014 compatible terminals for programs that cannot use the [truncated for brevity] }}}