* Richard Cobbe (cobbe@airmail.net) [020620 15:59]: > Lo, on Thursday, June 20, Colin Watson did write: > > > If you care about dpkg's available file being up-to-date, you need to > > run 'dselect update', which runs 'apt-get update' for you. You don't > > need to run 'apt-get update' as well. > > Pardon the somewhat elementary question, but what is dpkg's available > file used for, and why would I need it to be up to date? My understanding is that dpkg is the debian package manager, and apt is a tool used for downloading debs. dpkg can use various methods for getting debs: they can be sitting on your hard disk, on a cdrom, can be downloaded by ftp, etc. But pretty much everyone uses the apt backend to dselect. Apt knows how to keep track of debs available from various sources, and knows how to ask dpkg to install them once they've been downloaded. But it doesn't mess with dpkg's database of what versions of what packages are available. That's how I see the system working, but be warned, I'm just a user, too! =) In any case, it seems like you can pretty safely manage a system using only apt, but that it's slightly more "proper" to use dselect update instead of apt-get update because then dpkg's database contains current information as well, so that things like dpkg -p and dselect will work. If you're one of many people who fears dselect and vows never to use it, and uses apt-cache instead of the dpkg tools, then you can probably just keep using apt-get update and be no worse off for it. Myself, I like to use dselect update, pretty much just because it doesn't cost me anything extra, and I always have the option of using dselect or dpkg -p (or anything else that uses dpkg's available database that's not on the top of my head right now...). I guess _that_ was really the question you asked, though: what is it used for. Well, at least dpkg and dselect use it, maybe other things, too. Hopefully someone else can expand on that point. good times, Vineet -- http://www.doorstop.net/ -- http://www.anti-dmca.org/
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