Extraction Methods on Linux Package Dependency Relations

A Linux operating system is composed of a large number of software packages. Among packages there exist a variety of complex dependency relations, and their management is the foundation of building and maintaining Linux operating system. And the premise of the management is the dependency relations' extraction. Based on the analysis of several different formats of Linux software packages, a unified format for package metadata, which is mainly dependency management oriented, is defined in this paper. Moreover package metadata extraction methods for different package formats, including the RPM and DEB packages, are given. And the corresponding supporting tool is implemented, which lays the groundwork for Linux package dependency modeling and integrity check.