Re: Debian Questions on apt-get

[Scott Ferguson <prettyfly.productions@gmail.com>]

On 10/06/11 22:21, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 12:15 PM, Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 11:03:36AM -0500, Matt wrote:

<snipped>

>>> To find a package I also frequently do something like this:
>>>
>>> yum list available |grep abr_package_name
>>
>> This is either "apt-cache search abr_package_name" to look for
>> prospective packages or "dpkg -l abr_package_name" to show the state of
>> packages on your system.
> 
> No. It's not.  Please do not confuse newbies. 'dpkg -l' merely shows
> installed packages, 'yum list' shows installed and *available*
> packages. I'm actually looking for a simple comand line entry for apt
> to list all the available packages for a system, rather than directly
> parsing /var/lib/dpkg/available, but this is not it.

To list all available packages:-
# apt-get update (refresh database of available packages)
# apt-cache dumpavail | less (will give you detailed info on all
available packages - difficult to grep through though)
# apt-cache pkgnames | less (will give you just the package names for
all available packages, in no particular order)

I find most useful:-
# apt-cache search [regex] | less

Asking me about the merits of aptitude is liking asking a emac fanboi
about the merits of vi :-)

# apt-get -s whatever (is your friend)

Cheers


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