Joey's Tools: Stable Releases
debian-prepare-update
This program builds the preparation pages and files from the underlying data. It is executed via a Makefile and not directly.
elmo
This program is similar to James' madison but enhanced in many ways. In my opinion the output is nicer, but that's just minor. It can be parametrised much more and has some nice features as listing all packages in a given distribution and stuff. It is used to build the underlying data for the preparation pages. It is useful for other developers as well and provides a comprehensive help screen.
difftar
This is just a wrapper around diff -Nurp, but will
work where interdiff will fail since two Debian native
packages need to be compared. This helps a lot.
diffpackages
This program is a wrapper for interdiff,
difftar and debdiff in order to provide a
report the changes between two sets of packages. It can cope with
source files, Debian packages and even .changes files (preferred
use). It helps locate missing dependencies, dirty patches and the
like. It will diff against the proper distribution, i.e. again
ststable or against security if it's available.
debian-check-update
This program is run after packages have been installed moved from the proposed-updates distribution into the stable distribution. It will read the underlying data for the preparation and compare it to the actual contents of the database. It is supposed to discover inconsistencies.
dpkg-grabfiles
This program reads an arbitrary amount of .changes
files and queries the security database for the location of the
corresponding files. It helps me with re-uploading security updates
to the main archives. This needs to be done manually if either the
security officer forgets to hit 'y' for uploading or when the katie
suite fails to upload the files.