Re: What shows what an uninstalled package does?
Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:
> If I want to find out about a package. I mean, like what it
> actually does, what is the right command, when the package is not
> installed but apt-cache knows about it?
I'd recommend not trying to do everything from the command line.
These days, I like 'aptitude' as a front-end to APT; it's easy to see
a package's description, dependencies/recommendations/suggestions and
reverse *, and to resolve dependency issues that come out of
packages. Simple prodding inside of aptitude can usually give a quick
answer to the all-too-often-asked question, "why does 'apt-get
dist-upgrade' want to remove [package I care about]?".
> In case any former redhat users see this, I'm looking for something
> that works like `rpm -qip <package>' (which also works on ftp sites
> that allow it) It gives a general blurb that tells what the package
> does.
'dpkg -s <package>' (for installed packages) or 'apt-cache show
<package>' will give you the package description.
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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