Re: documentation for 'Status' field in /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 13:53:53 +0200, Eugene V. Lyubimkin wrote:
> Hello dpkg folks, where can I find actual documentation for correct
> meanings of words in 'Status: ...' lines in /var/lib/dpkg/status, and
> the info which triads are possible and which are not?

Part of this is documented in the dpkg man page (PACKAGE STATES,
PACKAGE SELECTION STATES and PACKAGE FLAGS), but then I don't think we
have user documentation for the field itself, as theoretically no one,
execept for libdpkg based apps, should be reading that file directly,

I've to send a mail with future work and a roadmap for 1.15.x, which
includes getting apt and aptitude to switch to use a libdpkg for parsing
the db. But, anyway for now, the function parsing the Status field is in
lib/fields.c (f_status), and the currently accepted values can be found
in lib/parsehelp.c (statusinfos, eflaginfos, wantinfos), take into
account some are only possible while reading and are going to get
fixed up internally at that point.

regards,
guillem