Re: In what package can I find <anyfile>?

[Junio Hamano <junio@twinsun.com>]

In this thread earlier, Peter Galbraith asked how to find out
which package an arbitrary file on his Debian system belongs to,
and rolled his own using `dpkg --info' and `dpkg --contents'.
Later, some people suggested that this information is available
in dists/stable/Contents-i386.gz file on the main distribution
server.

I do not think any of the above covers configuration files
produced in .postinst scripts.  For example:

 # dpkg -S /etc/gpm.conf
 dpkg: /etc/gpm.conf not found.
 # dpkg --listfiles gpm | grep /etc/gpm.conf
 # gzip -d <Contents-i386.gz | grep /etc/gpm.conf
 # 

Unfortunately I most often find myself looking for either (1)
what the package responsible for a particular configuration file
is, or (2) which configuration files to modify in order to use a
particular package.  The dpkg tool does not help me in either of
these cases.

Of course, if the filename is something obvious (such as
/etc/gpm.conf in the above example), I can always guess (if I am
looking for the package responsible for the configuration file),
or read the documentation (if I want to know which files to
tweak), but that is besides the point.  Since dpkg knows
everything about the archive part of the packge, it also would
be nicer if it also can tell me about the other configuration
files.  I realize that this would involve an additional field in
the control file, and a change to the packaging policy.