I challenge you to tell me the dates of the packages using just the Packages file. The best you can do is $ grep-available -F version 200 -s Version|wc -l 1207 But that still leaves $ grep-available -F version 200 -vs Version|wc -l 15127 packages that don't put the date into their version numbers. Off line with just the Packages file, you can't tell a dusty 1997 package from an up to the minute state of the art package.