doc/apt-cache.8.xml

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   5 <!ENTITY % aptent SYSTEM "apt.ent">
   6 %aptent;
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   9
  10 <refentry>
  11
  12  <refentryinfo>
  13    &apt-author.jgunthorpe;
  14    &apt-author.team;
  15    &apt-email;
  16    &apt-product;
  17    <!-- The last update date -->
  18    <date>29 February 2004</date>
  19  </refentryinfo>
  20
  21  <refmeta>
  22    <refentrytitle>apt-cache</refentrytitle>
  23    <manvolnum>8</manvolnum>
  24  </refmeta>
  25
  26  <!-- Man page title -->
  27  <refnamediv>
  28     <refname>apt-cache</refname>
  29     <refpurpose>APT package handling utility -- cache manipulator</refpurpose>
  30  </refnamediv>
  31
  32  <!-- Arguments -->
  33  <refsynopsisdiv>
  34    <cmdsynopsis>
  35       <command>apt-cache</command>
  36       <arg><option>-hvsn</option></arg>
  37       <arg><option>-o=<replaceable>config string</replaceable></option></arg>
  38       <arg><option>-c=<replaceable>file</replaceable></option></arg>
  39       <group choice="req">
  40          <arg>add <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>file</replaceable></arg></arg>
  41          <arg>gencaches</arg>
  42          <arg>showpkg <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  43          <arg>showsrc <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  44          <arg>stats</arg>
  45          <arg>dump</arg>
  46          <arg>dumpavail</arg>
  47          <arg>unmet</arg>
  48          <arg>search <arg choice="plain"><replaceable>regex</replaceable></arg></arg>
  49          <arg>show <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  50          <arg>depends <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  51          <arg>rdepends <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  52          <arg>pkgnames <arg choice="plain"><replaceable>prefix</replaceable></arg></arg>
  53          <arg>dotty <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  54          <arg>xvcg <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  55          <arg>policy <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkgs</replaceable></arg></arg>
  56          <arg>madison <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkgs</replaceable></arg></arg>
  57       </group>
  58    </cmdsynopsis>
  59  </refsynopsisdiv>
  60
  61  <refsect1><title>Description</title>
  62    <para><command>apt-cache</command> performs a variety of operations on APT's package
  63    cache. <command>apt-cache</command> does not manipulate the state of the system
  64    but does provide operations to search and generate interesting output
  65    from the package metadata.</para>
  66
  67    <para>Unless the <option>-h</option>, or <option>--help</option> option is given, one of the
  68    commands below must be present.</para>
  69
  70    <variablelist>
  71      <varlistentry><term>add <replaceable>file(s)</replaceable></term>
  72      <listitem><para><literal>add</literal> adds the named package index files to the package cache.
  73      This is for debugging only.</para></listitem>
  74      </varlistentry>
  75
  76      <varlistentry><term>gencaches</term>
  77      <listitem><para><literal>gencaches</literal> performs the same operation as
  78      <command>apt-get check</command>. It builds the source and package caches from
  79      the sources in &sources-list; and from
  80      <filename>/var/lib/dpkg/status</filename>.</para></listitem>
  81      </varlistentry>
  82
  83      <varlistentry><term>showpkg <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
  84      <listitem><para><literal>showpkg</literal> displays information about the packages listed on the
  85      command line. Remaining arguments are package names. The available
  86      versions and reverse dependencies of each package listed are listed, as
  87      well as forward dependencies for each version. Forward (normal)
  88      dependencies are those packages upon which the package in question
  89      depends; reverse dependencies are those packages that depend upon the
  90      package in question. Thus, forward dependencies must be satisfied for a
  91      package, but reverse dependencies need not be.
  92      For instance, <command>apt-cache showpkg libreadline2</command> would produce
  93      output similar to the following:</para>
  94
  95 <informalexample><programlisting>
  96 Package: libreadline2
  97 Versions: 2.1-12(/var/state/apt/lists/foo_Packages),
  98 Reverse Depends:
  99   libreadlineg2,libreadline2
 100   libreadline2-altdev,libreadline2
 101 Dependencies:
 102 2.1-12 - libc5 (2 5.4.0-0) ncurses3.0 (0 (null))
 103 Provides:
 104 2.1-12 -
 105 Reverse Provides:
 106 </programlisting></informalexample>
 107
 108      <para>Thus it may be seen that libreadline2, version 2.1-12, depends on
 109      libc5 and ncurses3.0 which must be installed for libreadline2 to work.
 110      In turn, libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev depend on libreadline2. If
 111      libreadline2 is installed, libc5 and ncurses3.0 (and ldso) must also be
 112      installed; libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev do not have to be
 113      installed. For the specific meaning of the remainder of the output it
 114      is best to consult the apt source code.</para></listitem>
 115      </varlistentry>
 116
 117      <varlistentry><term>stats</term><listitem><para><literal>stats</literal> displays some statistics about the cache.
 118      No further arguments are expected. Statistics reported are:
 119      <itemizedlist>
 120        <listitem><para><literal>Total package names</literal> is the number of package names found
 121        in the cache.</para>
 122        </listitem>
 123
 124        <listitem><para><literal>Normal packages</literal> is the number of regular, ordinary package
 125        names; these are packages that bear a one-to-one correspondence between
 126        their names and the names used by other packages for them in
 127        dependencies. The majority of packages fall into this category.</para>
 128        </listitem>
 129
 130        <listitem><para><literal>Pure virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages that exist
 131        only as a virtual package name; that is, packages only "provide" the
 132        virtual package name, and no package actually uses the name. For
 133        instance, "mail-transport-agent" in the Debian GNU/Linux system is a
 134        pure virtual package; several packages provide "mail-transport-agent",
 135        but there is no package named "mail-transport-agent".</para>
 136        </listitem>
 137
 138        <listitem><para><literal>Single virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages with only
 139        one package providing a particular virtual package. For example, in the
 140        Debian GNU/Linux system, "X11-text-viewer" is a virtual package, but
 141        only one package, xless, provides "X11-text-viewer".</para>
 142        </listitem>
 143
 144        <listitem><para><literal>Mixed virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages that either
 145        provide a particular virtual package or have the virtual package name
 146        as the package name. For instance, in the Debian GNU/Linux system,
 147        "debconf" is both an actual package, and provided by the debconf-tiny
 148        package.</para>
 149        </listitem>
 150
 151        <listitem><para><literal>Missing</literal> is the number of package names that were referenced in
 152        a dependency but were not provided by any package. Missing packages may
 153        be in evidence if a full distribution is not accessed, or if a package
 154        (real or virtual) has been dropped from the distribution. Usually they
 155        are referenced from Conflicts or Breaks statements.</para>
 156        </listitem>
 157
 158        <listitem><para><literal>Total distinct</literal> versions is the number of package versions
 159        found in the cache; this value is therefore at least equal to the
 160        number of total package names. If more than one distribution (both
 161        "stable" and "unstable", for instance), is being accessed, this value
 162        can be considerably larger than the number of total package names.</para>
 163        </listitem>
 164
 165        <listitem><para><literal>Total dependencies</literal> is the number of dependency relationships
 166        claimed by all of the packages in the cache.</para>
 167        </listitem>
 168      </itemizedlist>
 169      </para></listitem>
 170      </varlistentry>
 171
 172      <varlistentry><term>showsrc <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 173      <listitem><para><literal>showsrc</literal> displays all the source package records that match
 174      the given package names. All versions are shown, as well as all
 175      records that declare the name to be a Binary.</para></listitem>
 176      </varlistentry>
 177
 178      <varlistentry><term>dump</term>
 179      <listitem><para><literal>dump</literal> shows a short listing of every package in the cache. It is
 180      primarily for debugging.</para></listitem>
 181      </varlistentry>
 182
 183      <varlistentry><term>dumpavail</term>
 184      <listitem><para><literal>dumpavail</literal> prints out an available list to stdout. This is
 185      suitable for use with &dpkg; and is used by the &dselect; method.</para></listitem>
 186      </varlistentry>
 187
 188      <varlistentry><term>unmet</term>
 189      <listitem><para><literal>unmet</literal> displays a summary of all unmet dependencies in the
 190      package cache.</para></listitem>
 191      </varlistentry>
 192
 193      <varlistentry><term>show <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 194      <listitem><para><literal>show</literal> performs a function similar to
 195      <command>dpkg --print-avail</command>; it displays the package records for the
 196      named packages.</para></listitem>
 197      </varlistentry>
 198
 199      <varlistentry><term>search <replaceable>regex [ regex ... ]</replaceable></term>
 200      <listitem><para><literal>search</literal> performs a full text search on all available package
 201      lists for the POSIX regex pattern given, see
 202      <citerefentry><refentrytitle><command>regex</command></refentrytitle>
 203      <manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>.
 204      It searches the package names and the
 205      descriptions for an occurrence of the regular expression and prints out
 206      the package name and the short description, including virtual package
 207      names.
 208      If <option>--full</option> is given
 209      then output identical to <literal>show</literal> is produced for each matched
 210      package, and if <option>--names-only</option> is given then the long description
 211      is not searched, only the package name is.</para>
 212      <para>
 213      Separate arguments can be used to specify multiple search patterns that
 214      are and'ed together.</para></listitem>
 215      </varlistentry>
 216
 217      <varlistentry><term>depends <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 218      <listitem><para><literal>depends</literal> shows a listing of each dependency a package has
 219      and all the possible other packages that can fulfill that dependency.</para></listitem>
 220      </varlistentry>
 221
 222      <varlistentry><term>rdepends <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 223      <listitem><para><literal>rdepends</literal> shows a listing of each reverse dependency a
 224       package has.</para></listitem>
 225      </varlistentry>
 226
 227      <varlistentry><term>pkgnames <replaceable>[ prefix ]</replaceable></term>
 228      <listitem><para>This command prints the name of each package in the system. The optional
 229      argument is a prefix match to filter the name list. The output is suitable
 230      for use in a shell tab complete function and the output is generated
 231      extremely quickly. This command is best used with the
 232      <option>--generate</option> option.</para></listitem>
 233      </varlistentry>
 234
 235      <varlistentry><term>dotty <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 236      <listitem><para><literal>dotty</literal> takes a list of packages on the command line and
 237      generates output suitable for use by dotty from the
 238      <ulink url="http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/">GraphViz</ulink>
 239      package. The result will be a set of nodes and edges representing the
 240      relationships between the packages. By default the given packages will
 241      trace out all dependent packages; this can produce a very large graph.
 242      To limit the output to only the packages listed on the command line,
 243      set the <literal>APT::Cache::GivenOnly</literal> option.</para>
 244
 245      <para>The resulting nodes will have several shapes; normal packages are boxes,
 246      pure provides are triangles, mixed provides are diamonds,
 247      missing packages are hexagons. Orange boxes mean recursion was stopped
 248      [leaf packages], blue lines are pre-depends, green lines are conflicts.</para>
 249
 250      <para>Caution, dotty cannot graph larger sets of packages.</para></listitem>
 251      </varlistentry>
 252
 253      <varlistentry><term>xvcg <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 254          <listitem><para>The same as <literal>dotty</literal>, only for xvcg from the
 255          <ulink url="http://rw4.cs.uni-sb.de/users/sander/html/gsvcg1.html">VCG tool</ulink>.
 256          </para></listitem></varlistentry>
 257
 258      <varlistentry><term>policy <replaceable>[ pkg(s) ]</replaceable></term>
 259      <listitem><para><literal>policy</literal> is meant to help debug issues relating to the
 260      preferences file. With no arguments it will print out the
 261      priorities of each source. Otherwise it prints out detailed information
 262      about the priority selection of the named package.</para></listitem>
 263      </varlistentry>
 264
 265      <varlistentry><term>madison <replaceable>/[ pkg(s) ]</replaceable></term>
 266      <listitem><para><literal>apt-cache</literal>'s <literal>madison</literal> command attempts to mimic
 267      the output format and a subset of the functionality of the Debian
 268      archive management tool, <literal>madison</literal>.  It displays
 269      available versions of a package in a tabular format.  Unlike the
 270      original <literal>madison</literal>, it can only display information for
 271      the architecture for which APT has retrieved package lists
 272      (<literal>APT::Architecture</literal>).</para></listitem>
 273      </varlistentry>
 274    </variablelist>
 275  </refsect1>
 276
 277  <refsect1><title>options</title>
 278    &apt-cmdblurb;
 279
 280    <variablelist>
 281      <varlistentry><term><option>-p</option></term><term><option>--pkg-cache</option></term>
 282      <listitem><para>Select the file to store the package cache. The package cache is the
 283      primary cache used by all operations.
 284      Configuration Item: <literal>Dir::Cache::pkgcache</literal>.</para></listitem>
 285      </varlistentry>
 286
 287      <varlistentry><term><option>-s</option></term><term><option>--src-cache</option></term>
 288      <listitem><para>Select the file to store the source cache. The source is used only by
 289      <literal>gencaches</literal> and it stores a parsed version of the package
 290      information from remote sources. When building the package cache the
 291      source cache is used to avoid reparsing all of the package files.
 292      Configuration Item: <literal>Dir::Cache::srcpkgcache</literal>.</para></listitem>
 293      </varlistentry>
 294
 295      <varlistentry><term><option>-q</option></term><term><option>--quiet</option></term>
 296      <listitem><para>Quiet; produces output suitable for logging, omitting progress indicators.
 297      More q's will produce more quietness up to a maximum of 2. You can also use
 298      <option>-q=#</option> to set the quietness level, overriding the configuration file.
 299      Configuration Item: <literal>quiet</literal>.</para></listitem>
 300      </varlistentry>
 301
 302      <varlistentry><term><option>-i</option></term><term><option>--important</option></term>
 303      <listitem><para>Print only important dependencies; for use with unmet. Causes only Depends and
 304      Pre-Depends relations to be printed.
 305      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Important</literal>.</para></listitem>
 306      </varlistentry>
 307
 308      <varlistentry><term><option>-f</option></term><term><option>--full</option></term>
 309      <listitem><para>Print full package records when searching.
 310      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::ShowFull</literal>.</para></listitem>
 311      </varlistentry>
 312
 313      <varlistentry><term><option>-a</option></term><term><option>--all-versions</option></term>
 314      <listitem><para>Print full records for all available versions. This is the
 315      default; to turn it off, use <option>--no-all-versions</option>.
 316      If <option>--no-all-versions</option> is specified, only the candidate version
 317      will displayed (the one which would be selected for installation).
 318      This option is only applicable to  the <literal>show</literal> command.
 319      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::AllVersions</literal>.</para></listitem>
 320      </varlistentry>
 321
 322      <varlistentry><term><option>-g</option></term><term><option>--generate</option></term>
 323      <listitem><para>Perform automatic package cache regeneration, rather than use the cache
 324      as it is. This is the default; to turn it off, use <option>--no-generate</option>.
 325      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Generate</literal>.</para></listitem>
 326      </varlistentry>
 327
 328      <varlistentry><term><option>--names-only</option></term><term><option>-n</option></term>
 329      <listitem><para>Only search on the package names, not the long descriptions.
 330      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::NamesOnly</literal>.</para></listitem>
 331      </varlistentry>
 332
 333      <varlistentry><term><option>--all-names</option></term>
 334      <listitem><para>Make <literal>pkgnames</literal> print all names, including virtual packages
 335      and missing dependencies.
 336      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::AllNames</literal>.</para></listitem>
 337      </varlistentry>
 338
 339      <varlistentry><term><option>--recurse</option></term>
 340      <listitem><para>Make <literal>depends</literal> and <literal>rdepends</literal> recursive so
 341      that all packages mentioned are printed once.
 342      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::RecurseDepends</literal>.</para></listitem>
 343      </varlistentry>
 344
 345       <varlistentry><term><option>--installed</option></term>
 346       <listitem><para>
 347       Limit the output of <literal>depends</literal> and <literal>rdepends</literal> to
 348       packages which are currently installed.
 349       Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Installed</literal>.</para></listitem>
 350       </varlistentry>
 351
 352      &apt-commonoptions;
 353
 354    </variablelist>
 355  </refsect1>
 356
 357  <refsect1><title>Files</title>
 358    <variablelist>
 359      <varlistentry><term><filename>/etc/apt/sources.list</filename></term>
 360      <listitem><para>Locations to fetch packages from.
 361      Configuration Item: <literal>Dir::Etc::SourceList</literal>.</para></listitem>
 362      </varlistentry>
 363
 364      <varlistentry><term><filename>&statedir;/lists/</filename></term>
 365      <listitem><para>Storage area for state information for each package resource specified in
 366      &sources-list;
 367      Configuration Item: <literal>Dir::State::Lists</literal>.</para></listitem>
 368      </varlistentry>
 369
 370      <varlistentry><term><filename>&statedir;/lists/partial/</filename></term>
 371      <listitem><para>Storage area for state information in transit.
 372      Configuration Item: <literal>Dir::State::Lists</literal> (implicit partial).</para></listitem>
 373      </varlistentry>
 374    </variablelist>
 375  </refsect1>
 376
 377  <refsect1><title>See Also</title>
 378    <para>&apt-conf;, &sources-list;, &apt-get;
 379    </para>
 380  </refsect1>
 381
 382  <refsect1><title>Diagnostics</title>
 383    <para><command>apt-cache</command> returns zero on normal operation, decimal 100 on error.
 384    </para>
 385  </refsect1>
 386
 387  &manbugs;
 388
 389 </refentry>