Re: "dpkg --status" not sufficient.
Enrique Zanardi <ezanardi@ull.es> writes:
> > Will dpkg-perl allow me to query the status of the *current* system?
> > It seems to always want a "packages" file, but I must admit, given
> > *no* documentation, I haven't figured it all out yet.
> >
> > Also, even if I can just hand it the "status" file, isn't that just as
> > "bad" as parsing the file by hand (which Ian keeps telling us not to
> > do), or does dpkg-perl know how to safely synchronize with dpkg?
>
> AFAIK, dpkg-perl does the Right Thing, that is, using libdpkg to parse
> dpkg databases.
I looked at all the source for dpkg-perl, and as far as I can tell, it
doesn't use libdpkg for anything. Further, unless I overlooked
something, the only way I could see to get it to tell you *anything*
about the currently installed packages would be to tell it to parse
/var/lib/dpkg/status, which is a *big* no-no.
If my assesment is right, then I suppose I'll just have to use "dpkg
--status" for *every* package I need to know about. This is going to
be slow, but at least it's safe.
--
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930
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