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

["C. Chad Wallace" <ccwall@telus.net>]

Mario Vukelic wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-02-14 at 03:24, Colin Watson wrote:
>
> > 'dpkg -p' lists whatever's in /var/lib/dpkg/available; 'dpkg -l' lists
> > whatever's in /var/lib/dpkg/status. 
>
>
> Uh, for me (dpkg 1.9.21) man says -l lists available, and -p 
>
> dpkg  -p|--print-avail package
> 	Display details about package, as found in
> 	/var/lib/dpkg/available.
>
> dpkg -l | --list package-name-pattern ...
> 	List packages matching given pattern. If no 
> 	package-name-pattern is given, list all packages 
> 	in /var/lib/dpkg/available.

It says the same for me in the man page for dpkg-query(8), but when I do 
a dpkg -l, all the packages listed are either 'ii' (meaning selected and 
installed) or 'rc' (meaning removed, but not purged--IOW, they were once 
installed).  This couldn't possibly be all available packages for 
debian/testing because, for instance, I'm not using X and never have on 
that machine.

So it appears Colin is right in saying that dpkg -l gets its information 
from /var/lib/dpkg/status, not .../available.  The documentation must be 
wrong.

Chad.