Re: How to find dependency information for a package ?
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 11:00:59PM -0700, NewDeb <ace_shikha@hotmail.com> was heard to say:
> See, this is a mystery to me, because I am running the commands and viewing
> the control file of one single package. Why is the version showing up
> separately ?
You can't use apt-cache to display the control file of a .deb
directly; it shows the control file of an *arbitrary* version in the apt
cache.
> Ok, so what I am actually after is this - I am going to get an input of
> several .deb files (of proprietary software within my company). I have to
> read the .deb files to extract the payload and bundle them together to form
> a "big package" (in a non debian format). So far so good. However, I must
> also read the dependencies (again, of proprietary software within my
> company) listed in each .deb so as to include them in this "big package".
> This is the part (reading and extracting the exhaustive list of
> dependencies) I am not sure how to do and was hoping I can use preexisting
> debian tools to do this for me. Which one is best or do I have to write this
> from scratch ? If latter, is there any source I can refer ?
Personally, I think you'd probably be better off using python-apt (if
you speak python, anyway). But otherwise the dpkg output is canonical --
it shows you exactly what's in the .deb file. apt shows you what's
inside *some* .deb file, but you might have to do some work to make sure
it's the one you want.
> >> tomcat5-5.5.26-1jpp.2.fc7
Hrm, I assumed that the -5.5.whatever was a version number, but
apt-cache doesn't show me a version number after the package name. Did
you actually type in "apt-cache depends tomcat5-5.5.26-1jpp.2.fc7"?
Daniel
Reply to: