Debian – Viewing Debian documentation offline

You can create a simple shell function and place it in your .bashrc:

readme() {
  if [ -e /usr/share/doc/"$1"/README.Debian ]; then
    "$PAGER" /usr/share/doc/"$1"/README.Debian
  else
    echo "No README for $1"
  fi
}

Use:

$ readme vlc

$Id: README.Debian 1436 2008-08-31 23:06:34Z xtophe-guest $

Notes for anyone wanting to build Debian packages of VLC.

 - Default configuration is supposed to be latest unstable.

 - VLC does not link with libdvdcss by default, thus it will not depend
   on the libdvdcss packages. However it will use libdvdread that can
   optionally open libdvdcss if found. To build packages that link directly
   against libdvdcss, remove the --without-dvdcss flag in debian/rules.

$ readme foobar

No README for foobar

You can smarten it up a little when you look for other README files (like the compressed ones which are often present) if the Debian file does not exist. Or collect all README files and offer a choice from which the user can select which one to display.

You can do this locally by installing apt-file:

sudo apt-get install apt-file
sudo apt-file update
apt-file search /usr/share/xml/

(depending on the version of Debian you're using, you may not need the apt-file update step).