Ian Jackson writes ("Re: Multiple 'dpkg --compare-versions' in one process"):
> If it's really only thousands then just spawning dpkg each time should
> be fine. I just did a test of 2896 invocations of dpkg
> --compare-versions and it took 7.6s of real time on my 2GHz Athlon.
Oh, and if use dash instead of bash it's 6.5s instead.
Ian.