Posted by JoshTriplett on Thu 26 Oct 2006 at 14:22
Not sure if a manual page does what you need? Want to read the manual page first, before installing it? Use debman, from the debian-goodies package.
debman extracts manual pages from a Debian package and displays them with man. It can run in two different ways: debman -f pkg.deb manpage will view manpage from the uninstalled package pkg.deb, and debman -p pkg manpage will download the deb for pkg then display the manpage.
For example, try
debman -p git-core gitto read the git manual page without installing GIT from the git-core package.
This article can be found online at the Debian Administration website at the following bookmarkable URL:
This article is copyright 2006 JoshTriplett - please ask for permission to republish or translate.