/var/lib/dpkg/status, *complete* packagenames

[joostje@cistron.nl (joost witteveen)]

Hi Ian & debian-devel,

Recently there was a thread about the use of files in
/var/lib/dpkg/ in the package installation scripts, warning us
that those files may change location/format without notification.

I'd like to point out that at the moment, menu uses /var/ilb/dpkg/status,
to find out what packages are installed.

The reason I do this is partly because I wasn't aware that one shouldn't
use that file, but also because there is no real (documented?) alternative
at the moment:
  Yes, I know that "dpkg -l" will list some packages, but that is unusable
as it doesn't tell me the names of packages with "long names":


$ dpkg -l | grep ^i.*kernel-headers
ii  kernel-headers- 2.0.32-5       Linux kernel headers.

But the package "kernel-headers-" really isn't installed:

/$ dpkg -s kernel-headers-
Package `kernel-headers-' is not installed and no info is available.


This would mean that packages with long names cannot have menuentries.

Could we please have a way to find out the *complete* names of all
installed packages?


Thanks,
joostje


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org