Re: How to know whether a package is obsolete?

[Craig Dickson <crdic@yahoo.com>]

Craig Dickson wrote:

> /var/lib/dpkg/available seems to be the right thing. I can grep for all the
> "Filename:" lines, use sed to throw out all but the actual filenames, then
> grep the resulting file for all the .debs I have, one by one. Any .deb that
> isn't in the list isn't currently avaialable, and is therefore presumably out
> of date, and therefore a candidate for the Lost Packages site.

This almost works. I have one more question. For some packages, the actual
filename is not the same as what's listed in /var/lib/dpkg/avail. For
example, the current anti-aliasing-howto package is listed in avail as:

    anti-aliasing-howto_2.2.8_all.deb

However, the file in my /var/cache/apt/archives directory is:

    anti-aliasing-howto_4%3a2.2.8_all.deb

Note the extra 4%3a mysteriously inserted at the beginning of the package
version. I assume the %3a is intended to represent the ':' character in
hexadecimal, but why is it there at all?

I can work around it easily enough with a trivial sed script, but I'm
puzzled by it and wondered if anyone could explain it.

Thanks,

Craig