Actually, it seems that 'pkgdetails PKGS REAL' _is_ supported as it is called successfully several times; it is just not listed in the usage message...
The real problem in the failing call seems to be that $PKGS is empty: + PKGS= + /usr/lib/debootstrap/pkgdetails PKGS REAL [...]-i386_Packages <nothing> A check for that should avoid the error.
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