Re: Does dpkg -l refer only to installed, as opposed to available, packages?

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2004 at 10:43:34PM +0200, Shaul Karl wrote:
> Is it a bug that 
> 
>     dpkg -p kernel-source-2.6.2
> 	
> shows information about kernel-source-2.6.2 while
> 
>     dpkg -l kernel-source-2.6.2
> 
> claims the Version is <none> and the Description is (no description
> available)? It looks like dpkg -l refers only to packages that are
> installed, which is not the way I understand man dpkg.

'dpkg -p' lists whatever's in /var/lib/dpkg/available; 'dpkg -l' lists
whatever's in /var/lib/dpkg/status. I understand that, if you never use
dselect, available entries tend not always to be in status.

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]