@newbyte my personal use cases:

1) when modifying the parser code, run it before and after with the current apkindexes to show that either the result is the same or only has the wanted changes.

2) when I need to understand how pmbootstrap parses an APKINDEX to debug problems where it is relevant

But apparently I haven't used it in a year either 😅 Maybe it is worth keeping as hidden action that doesn't pollute the --help output, but can be found in the docs? Or maybe we should just remove it.