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Re: Is there an easy way to get the latest version number of a source package that is available?



On 2022-06-27 at 10:31, Tim Woodall wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> apt-get --only-source --download-only source <package>
> 
> will download the latest version of the source package.
> 
> Is there a one liner that will give me the version of the package
> (including the epoch) without downloading the package and parsing
> the dsc?

I'm not aware of one, just offhand; it'd be easy enough, except for the
problem that version number comparison gets complicated in corner cases
such as '+' and '~', and I'm not aware of a way to ensure that the
version number comparison is done correctly without making it no longer
a one-liner.

(Well, short of putting the more complicated logic into a script and
just running that script, but if you want a one-liner I assume that's
not an option.)

> ------
> Everything below here is what I've tried and problems I've
> encountered - feel free to comment on this but the above is the
> question that I'm particularly interested in whether there's a simple
> answer to.
> 
> 
> The filename doesn't include the epoch so I can't parse the output
> of --print-uris.
> 
> apt-cache showsrc <package> lists all of the versions available. I
> can (and am) parsing that to find the highest version number.

So... what is it that still needs to be done?

I was putting together a possibly-kludgy easy-enough solution, and was
running into the wall of needing to do pairwise comparisons (with 'dpkg
--compare-versions') of the versions produced by 'apt-cache showsrc
--only-source <package>', since any other comparison method isn't
guaranteed to produce the same highest-version result as dpkg would use
- but if you're already doing this, that looks like it solves the
problem, for me.

Is it just that your parsing makes this no longer a one-liner?

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

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