Installing from .deb files in macOS Catalina

I tried installing dpkg with brew. When it was done installing, it gave me the following message :-

==> Caveats This installation of dpkg is not configured to install software, so commands such as dpkg -i, dpkg --configure will fail.

Since dpkg -i is used to install packages, I need some help to fix this.

Also, are there any other ways to install .deb packages in MacOS? I'm open to using other methods as well

Thanks in advance

Solution 1:

As far I know, a .deb file is a packaged software installer for Debian Linux (and its derivatives.)

If you want to install it, you're out of luck. I don't think there is anyway to install .deb packages on OS X.

However, we can unpack a .deb file on Mac OS X without installing it.

If you use Xcode, a utility called ar is installed. You can run the following command:

ar -x path/to/filename.deb

Alternatively, you could use Homebrew to install the dpkg utility which has many more options to work against .deb files.

dpkg -c path/to/filename.deb