doc/apt-cache.8.xml

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
   2 <!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
   3   "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
   4
   5 <!ENTITY % aptent SYSTEM "apt.ent">
   6 %aptent;
   7
   8 <!ENTITY % aptverbatiment SYSTEM "apt-verbatim.ent">
   9 %aptverbatiment;
  10
  11 <!ENTITY % aptvendor SYSTEM "apt-vendor.ent">
  12 %aptvendor;
  13 ]>
  14
  15 <refentry>
  16
  17  <refentryinfo>
  18    &apt-author.jgunthorpe;
  19    &apt-author.team;
  20    &apt-email;
  21    &apt-product;
  22    <!-- The last update date -->
  23    <date>2012-06-09T00:00:00Z</date>
  24  </refentryinfo>
  25
  26  <refmeta>
  27    <refentrytitle>apt-cache</refentrytitle>
  28    <manvolnum>8</manvolnum>
  29    <refmiscinfo class="manual">APT</refmiscinfo>
  30  </refmeta>
  31
  32  <!-- Man page title -->
  33  <refnamediv>
  34     <refname>apt-cache</refname>
  35     <refpurpose>query the APT cache</refpurpose>
  36  </refnamediv>
  37
  38  &synopsis-command-apt-cache;
  39
  40  <refsect1><title>Description</title>
  41    <para><command>apt-cache</command> performs a variety of operations on APT's package
  42    cache. <command>apt-cache</command> does not manipulate the state of the system
  43    but does provide operations to search and generate interesting output
  44    from the package metadata.</para>
  45
  46    <para>Unless the <option>-h</option>, or <option>--help</option> option is given, one of the
  47    commands below must be present.</para>
  48
  49    <variablelist>
  50      <varlistentry><term><option>gencaches</option></term>
  51      <listitem><para><literal>gencaches</literal> creates APT's package cache. This is done
  52      implicitly by all commands needing this cache if it is missing or outdated.</para></listitem>
  53      </varlistentry>
  54
  55      <varlistentry><term><option>showpkg</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
  56      <listitem><para><literal>showpkg</literal> displays information about the packages listed on the
  57      command line. Remaining arguments are package names. The available
  58      versions and reverse dependencies of each package listed are listed, as
  59      well as forward dependencies for each version. Forward (normal)
  60      dependencies are those packages upon which the package in question
  61      depends; reverse dependencies are those packages that depend upon the
  62      package in question. Thus, forward dependencies must be satisfied for a
  63      package, but reverse dependencies need not be.
  64      For instance, <command>apt-cache showpkg libreadline2</command> would produce
  65      output similar to the following:</para>
  66
  67 <informalexample><programlisting>
  68 Package: libreadline2
  69 Versions: 2.1-12(/var/state/apt/lists/foo_Packages),
  70 Reverse Depends:
  71   libreadlineg2,libreadline2
  72   libreadline2-altdev,libreadline2
  73 Dependencies:
  74 2.1-12 - libc5 (2 5.4.0-0) ncurses3.0 (0 (null))
  75 Provides:
  76 2.1-12 -
  77 Reverse Provides:
  78 </programlisting></informalexample>
  79
  80      <para>Thus it may be seen that libreadline2, version 2.1-12, depends on
  81      libc5 and ncurses3.0 which must be installed for libreadline2 to work.
  82      In turn, libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev depend on libreadline2. If
  83      libreadline2 is installed, libc5 and ncurses3.0 (and ldso) must also be
  84      installed; libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev do not have to be
  85      installed. For the specific meaning of the remainder of the output it
  86      is best to consult the apt source code.</para></listitem>
  87      </varlistentry>
  88
  89      <varlistentry><term><option>stats</option></term><listitem><para><literal>stats</literal> displays some statistics about the cache.
  90      No further arguments are expected. Statistics reported are:
  91      <itemizedlist>
  92        <listitem><para><literal>Total package names</literal> is the number of package names found
  93        in the cache.</para>
  94        </listitem>
  95
  96        <listitem><para><literal>Normal packages</literal> is the number of regular, ordinary package
  97        names; these are packages that bear a one-to-one correspondence between
  98        their names and the names used by other packages for them in
  99        dependencies. The majority of packages fall into this category.</para>
 100        </listitem>
 101
 102        <listitem><para><literal>Pure virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages that exist
 103        only as a virtual package name; that is, packages only "provide" the
 104        virtual package name, and no package actually uses the name. For
 105        instance, "mail-transport-agent" in the Debian system is a
 106        pure virtual package; several packages provide "mail-transport-agent",
 107        but there is no package named "mail-transport-agent".</para>
 108        </listitem>
 109
 110        <listitem><para><literal>Single virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages with only
 111        one package providing a particular virtual package. For example, in the
 112        Debian system, "X11-text-viewer" is a virtual package, but
 113        only one package, xless, provides "X11-text-viewer".</para>
 114        </listitem>
 115
 116        <listitem><para><literal>Mixed virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages that either
 117        provide a particular virtual package or have the virtual package name
 118        as the package name. For instance, in the Debian system,
 119        "debconf" is both an actual package, and provided by the debconf-tiny
 120        package.</para>
 121        </listitem>
 122
 123        <listitem><para><literal>Missing</literal> is the number of package names that were referenced in
 124        a dependency but were not provided by any package. Missing packages may
 125        be an evidence if a full distribution is not accessed, or if a package
 126        (real or virtual) has been dropped from the distribution. Usually they
 127        are referenced from Conflicts or Breaks statements.</para>
 128        </listitem>
 129
 130        <listitem><para><literal>Total distinct</literal> versions is the number of package versions
 131        found in the cache; this value is therefore at least equal to the
 132        number of total package names. If more than one distribution is being accessed
 133        (for instance, "stable" and "unstable"), this value
 134        can be considerably larger than the number of total package names.</para>
 135        </listitem>
 136
 137        <listitem><para><literal>Total dependencies</literal> is the number of dependency relationships
 138        claimed by all of the packages in the cache.</para>
 139        </listitem>
 140      </itemizedlist>
 141      </para></listitem>
 142      </varlistentry>
 143
 144      <varlistentry><term><option>showsrc</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 145      <listitem><para><literal>showsrc</literal> displays all the source package records that match
 146      the given package names. All versions are shown, as well as all
 147      records that declare the name to be a binary package.</para></listitem>
 148      </varlistentry>
 149
 150      <varlistentry><term><option>dump</option></term>
 151      <listitem><para><literal>dump</literal> shows a short listing of every package in the cache. It is
 152      primarily for debugging.</para></listitem>
 153      </varlistentry>
 154
 155      <varlistentry><term><option>dumpavail</option></term>
 156      <listitem><para><literal>dumpavail</literal> prints out an available list to stdout. This is
 157      suitable for use with &dpkg; and is used by the &dselect; method.</para></listitem>
 158      </varlistentry>
 159
 160      <varlistentry><term><option>unmet</option></term>
 161      <listitem><para><literal>unmet</literal> displays a summary of all unmet dependencies in the
 162      package cache.</para></listitem>
 163      </varlistentry>
 164
 165      <varlistentry><term><option>show</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 166      <listitem><para><literal>show</literal> performs a function similar to
 167      <command>dpkg --print-avail</command>; it displays the package records for the
 168      named packages.</para></listitem>
 169      </varlistentry>
 170
 171      <varlistentry><term><option>search</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-regex;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 172      <listitem><para><literal>search</literal> performs a full text search on all available package
 173      lists for the POSIX regex pattern given, see &regex;.
 174      It searches the package names and the
 175      descriptions for an occurrence of the regular expression and prints out
 176      the package name and the short description, including virtual package
 177      names.
 178      If <option>--full</option> is given
 179      then output identical to <literal>show</literal> is produced for each matched
 180      package, and if <option>--names-only</option> is given then the long description
 181      is not searched, only the package name is.</para>
 182      <para>
 183      Separate arguments can be used to specify multiple search patterns that
 184      are and'ed together.</para></listitem>
 185      </varlistentry>
 186
 187      <varlistentry><term><option>depends</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 188      <listitem><para><literal>depends</literal> shows a listing of each dependency a package has
 189      and all the possible other packages that can fulfill that dependency.</para></listitem>
 190      </varlistentry>
 191
 192      <varlistentry><term><option>rdepends</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 193      <listitem><para><literal>rdepends</literal> shows a listing of each reverse dependency a
 194       package has.</para></listitem>
 195      </varlistentry>
 196
 197      <varlistentry><term><option>pkgnames</option> <optional><replaceable>&synopsis-prefix;</replaceable></optional></term>
 198      <listitem><para>This command prints the name of each package APT knows. The optional
 199      argument is a prefix match to filter the name list. The output is suitable
 200      for use in a shell tab complete function and the output is generated
 201      extremely quickly. This command is best used with the
 202      <option>--generate</option> option.</para>
 203      <para>Note that a package which APT knows of is not necessarily available to download,
 204      installable or installed, e.g. virtual packages are also listed in the generated list.
 205      </para></listitem>
 206      </varlistentry>
 207
 208      <varlistentry><term><option>dotty</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 209      <listitem><para><literal>dotty</literal> takes a list of packages on the command line and
 210      generates output suitable for use by dotty from the
 211      <ulink url="http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/">GraphViz</ulink>
 212      package. The result will be a set of nodes and edges representing the
 213      relationships between the packages. By default the given packages will
 214      trace out all dependent packages; this can produce a very large graph.
 215      To limit the output to only the packages listed on the command line,
 216      set the <literal>APT::Cache::GivenOnly</literal> option.</para>
 217
 218      <para>The resulting nodes will have several shapes; normal packages are boxes,
 219      pure virtual packages are triangles, mixed virtual packages are diamonds,
 220      missing packages are hexagons. Orange boxes mean recursion was stopped
 221      (leaf packages), blue lines are pre-depends, green lines are conflicts.</para>
 222
 223      <para>Caution, dotty cannot graph larger sets of packages.</para></listitem>
 224      </varlistentry>
 225
 226      <varlistentry><term><option>xvcg</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 227          <listitem><para>The same as <literal>dotty</literal>, only for xvcg from the
 228          <ulink url="http://rw4.cs.uni-sb.de/users/sander/html/gsvcg1.html">VCG tool</ulink>.
 229          </para></listitem></varlistentry>
 230
 231          <varlistentry><term><option>policy</option> <optional><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</optional></term>
 232      <listitem><para><literal>policy</literal> is meant to help debug issues relating to the
 233      preferences file. With no arguments it will print out the
 234      priorities of each source. Otherwise it prints out detailed information
 235      about the priority selection of the named package.</para></listitem>
 236      </varlistentry>
 237
 238      <varlistentry><term><option>madison</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 239      <listitem><para><literal>apt-cache</literal>'s <literal>madison</literal> command attempts to mimic
 240      the output format and a subset of the functionality of the Debian
 241      archive management tool, <literal>madison</literal>.  It displays
 242      available versions of a package in a tabular format.  Unlike the
 243      original <literal>madison</literal>, it can only display information for
 244      the architecture for which APT has retrieved package lists
 245      (<literal>APT::Architecture</literal>).</para></listitem>
 246      </varlistentry>
 247    </variablelist>
 248  </refsect1>
 249
 250  <refsect1><title>options</title>
 251    &apt-cmdblurb;
 252
 253    <variablelist>
 254      <varlistentry><term><option>-p</option></term><term><option>--pkg-cache</option></term>
 255      <listitem><para>Select the file to store the package cache. The package cache is the
 256      primary cache used by all operations.
 257      Configuration Item: <literal>Dir::Cache::pkgcache</literal>.</para></listitem>
 258      </varlistentry>
 259
 260      <varlistentry><term><option>-s</option></term><term><option>--src-cache</option></term>
 261      <listitem><para>Select the file to store the source cache. The source is used only by
 262      <literal>gencaches</literal> and it stores a parsed version of the package
 263      information from remote sources. When building the package cache the
 264      source cache is used to avoid reparsing all of the package files.
 265      Configuration Item: <literal>Dir::Cache::srcpkgcache</literal>.</para></listitem>
 266      </varlistentry>
 267
 268      <varlistentry><term><option>-q</option></term><term><option>--quiet</option></term>
 269      <listitem><para>Quiet; produces output suitable for logging, omitting progress indicators.
 270      More q's will produce more quietness up to a maximum of 2. You can also use
 271      <option>-q=#</option> to set the quietness level, overriding the configuration file.
 272      Configuration Item: <literal>quiet</literal>.</para></listitem>
 273      </varlistentry>
 274
 275      <varlistentry><term><option>-i</option></term><term><option>--important</option></term>
 276      <listitem><para>Print only important dependencies; for use with <literal>unmet</literal>
 277      and <literal>depends</literal>. Causes only Depends and
 278      Pre-Depends relations to be printed.
 279      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Important</literal>.</para></listitem>
 280      </varlistentry>
 281
 282      <varlistentry><term><option>--no-pre-depends</option></term>
 283                    <term><option>--no-depends</option></term>
 284                    <term><option>--no-recommends</option></term>
 285                    <term><option>--no-suggests</option></term>
 286                    <term><option>--no-conflicts</option></term>
 287                    <term><option>--no-breaks</option></term>
 288                    <term><option>--no-replaces</option></term>
 289                    <term><option>--no-enhances</option></term>
 290                    <listitem><para>Per default the <literal>depends</literal> and
 291      <literal>rdepends</literal> print all dependencies. This can be tweaked with
 292      these flags which will omit the specified dependency type.
 293      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Show<replaceable>DependencyType</replaceable></literal>
 294      e.g. <literal>APT::Cache::ShowRecommends</literal>.</para></listitem>
 295      </varlistentry>
 296      <varlistentry><term><option>-f</option></term><term><option>--full</option></term>
 297      <listitem><para>Print full package records when searching.
 298      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::ShowFull</literal>.</para></listitem>
 299      </varlistentry>
 300
 301      <varlistentry><term><option>-a</option></term><term><option>--all-versions</option></term>
 302      <listitem><para>Print full records for all available versions. This is the
 303      default; to turn it off, use <option>--no-all-versions</option>.
 304      If <option>--no-all-versions</option> is specified, only the candidate version
 305      will be displayed (the one which would be selected for installation).
 306      This option is only applicable to  the <literal>show</literal> command.
 307      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::AllVersions</literal>.</para></listitem>
 308      </varlistentry>
 309
 310      <varlistentry><term><option>-g</option></term><term><option>--generate</option></term>
 311      <listitem><para>Perform automatic package cache regeneration, rather than use the cache
 312      as it is. This is the default; to turn it off, use <option>--no-generate</option>.
 313      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Generate</literal>.</para></listitem>
 314      </varlistentry>
 315
 316      <varlistentry><term><option>--names-only</option></term><term><option>-n</option></term>
 317      <listitem><para>Only search on the package names, not the long descriptions.
 318      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::NamesOnly</literal>.</para></listitem>
 319      </varlistentry>
 320
 321      <varlistentry><term><option>--all-names</option></term>
 322      <listitem><para>Make <literal>pkgnames</literal> print all names, including virtual packages
 323      and missing dependencies.
 324      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::AllNames</literal>.</para></listitem>
 325      </varlistentry>
 326
 327      <varlistentry><term><option>--recurse</option></term>
 328      <listitem><para>Make <literal>depends</literal> and <literal>rdepends</literal> recursive so
 329      that all packages mentioned are printed once.
 330      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::RecurseDepends</literal>.</para></listitem>
 331      </varlistentry>
 332
 333       <varlistentry><term><option>--installed</option></term>
 334       <listitem><para>
 335       Limit the output of <literal>depends</literal> and <literal>rdepends</literal> to
 336       packages which are currently installed.
 337       Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Installed</literal>.</para></listitem>
 338       </varlistentry>
 339
 340      &apt-commonoptions;
 341
 342    </variablelist>
 343  </refsect1>
 344
 345  <refsect1><title>Files</title>
 346    <variablelist>
 347      &file-sourceslist;
 348      &file-statelists;
 349    </variablelist>
 350  </refsect1>
 351
 352  <refsect1><title>See Also</title>
 353    <para>&apt-conf;, &sources-list;, &apt-get;
 354    </para>
 355  </refsect1>
 356
 357  <refsect1><title>Diagnostics</title>
 358    <para><command>apt-cache</command> returns zero on normal operation, decimal 100 on error.
 359    </para>
 360  </refsect1>
 361
 362  &manbugs;
 363
 364 </refentry>