doc/apt-cache.8.xml

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   3   "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd" [
   4
   5 <!ENTITY % aptent SYSTEM "apt.ent">
   6 %aptent;
   7
   8 <!ENTITY % aptverbatiment SYSTEM "apt-verbatim.ent">
   9 %aptverbatiment;
  10
  11 ]>
  12
  13 <refentry>
  14
  15  <refentryinfo>
  16    &apt-author.jgunthorpe;
  17    &apt-author.team;
  18    &apt-email;
  19    &apt-product;
  20    <!-- The last update date -->
  21    <date>04 February 2011</date>
  22  </refentryinfo>
  23
  24  <refmeta>
  25    <refentrytitle>apt-cache</refentrytitle>
  26    <manvolnum>8</manvolnum>
  27    <refmiscinfo class="manual">APT</refmiscinfo>
  28  </refmeta>
  29
  30  <!-- Man page title -->
  31  <refnamediv>
  32     <refname>apt-cache</refname>
  33     <refpurpose>query the APT cache</refpurpose>
  34  </refnamediv>
  35
  36  &synopsis-command-apt-cache;
  37
  38  <refsect1><title>Description</title>
  39    <para><command>apt-cache</command> performs a variety of operations on APT's package
  40    cache. <command>apt-cache</command> does not manipulate the state of the system
  41    but does provide operations to search and generate interesting output
  42    from the package metadata.</para>
  43
  44    <para>Unless the <option>-h</option>, or <option>--help</option> option is given, one of the
  45    commands below must be present.</para>
  46
  47    <variablelist>
  48      <varlistentry><term><option>gencaches</option></term>
  49      <listitem><para><literal>gencaches</literal> creates APT's package cache. This is done
  50      implicitly by all commands needing this cache if it is missing or outdated.</para></listitem>
  51      </varlistentry>
  52
  53      <varlistentry><term><option>showpkg</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
  54      <listitem><para><literal>showpkg</literal> displays information about the packages listed on the
  55      command line. Remaining arguments are package names. The available
  56      versions and reverse dependencies of each package listed are listed, as
  57      well as forward dependencies for each version. Forward (normal)
  58      dependencies are those packages upon which the package in question
  59      depends; reverse dependencies are those packages that depend upon the
  60      package in question. Thus, forward dependencies must be satisfied for a
  61      package, but reverse dependencies need not be.
  62      For instance, <command>apt-cache showpkg libreadline2</command> would produce
  63      output similar to the following:</para>
  64
  65 <informalexample><programlisting>
  66 Package: libreadline2
  67 Versions: 2.1-12(/var/state/apt/lists/foo_Packages),
  68 Reverse Depends:
  69   libreadlineg2,libreadline2
  70   libreadline2-altdev,libreadline2
  71 Dependencies:
  72 2.1-12 - libc5 (2 5.4.0-0) ncurses3.0 (0 (null))
  73 Provides:
  74 2.1-12 -
  75 Reverse Provides:
  76 </programlisting></informalexample>
  77
  78      <para>Thus it may be seen that libreadline2, version 2.1-12, depends on
  79      libc5 and ncurses3.0 which must be installed for libreadline2 to work.
  80      In turn, libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev depend on libreadline2. If
  81      libreadline2 is installed, libc5 and ncurses3.0 (and ldso) must also be
  82      installed; libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev do not have to be
  83      installed. For the specific meaning of the remainder of the output it
  84      is best to consult the apt source code.</para></listitem>
  85      </varlistentry>
  86
  87      <varlistentry><term><option>stats</option></term><listitem><para><literal>stats</literal> displays some statistics about the cache.
  88      No further arguments are expected. Statistics reported are:
  89      <itemizedlist>
  90        <listitem><para><literal>Total package names</literal> is the number of package names found
  91        in the cache.</para>
  92        </listitem>
  93
  94        <listitem><para><literal>Normal packages</literal> is the number of regular, ordinary package
  95        names; these are packages that bear a one-to-one correspondence between
  96        their names and the names used by other packages for them in
  97        dependencies. The majority of packages fall into this category.</para>
  98        </listitem>
  99
 100        <listitem><para><literal>Pure virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages that exist
 101        only as a virtual package name; that is, packages only "provide" the
 102        virtual package name, and no package actually uses the name. For
 103        instance, "mail-transport-agent" in the Debian GNU/Linux system is a
 104        pure virtual package; several packages provide "mail-transport-agent",
 105        but there is no package named "mail-transport-agent".</para>
 106        </listitem>
 107
 108        <listitem><para><literal>Single virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages with only
 109        one package providing a particular virtual package. For example, in the
 110        Debian GNU/Linux system, "X11-text-viewer" is a virtual package, but
 111        only one package, xless, provides "X11-text-viewer".</para>
 112        </listitem>
 113
 114        <listitem><para><literal>Mixed virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages that either
 115        provide a particular virtual package or have the virtual package name
 116        as the package name. For instance, in the Debian GNU/Linux system,
 117        "debconf" is both an actual package, and provided by the debconf-tiny
 118        package.</para>
 119        </listitem>
 120
 121        <listitem><para><literal>Missing</literal> is the number of package names that were referenced in
 122        a dependency but were not provided by any package. Missing packages may
 123        be an evidence if a full distribution is not accessed, or if a package
 124        (real or virtual) has been dropped from the distribution. Usually they
 125        are referenced from Conflicts or Breaks statements.</para>
 126        </listitem>
 127
 128        <listitem><para><literal>Total distinct</literal> versions is the number of package versions
 129        found in the cache; this value is therefore at least equal to the
 130        number of total package names. If more than one distribution (both
 131        "stable" and "unstable", for instance), is being accessed, this value
 132        can be considerably larger than the number of total package names.</para>
 133        </listitem>
 134
 135        <listitem><para><literal>Total dependencies</literal> is the number of dependency relationships
 136        claimed by all of the packages in the cache.</para>
 137        </listitem>
 138      </itemizedlist>
 139      </para></listitem>
 140      </varlistentry>
 141
 142      <varlistentry><term><option>showsrc</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 143      <listitem><para><literal>showsrc</literal> displays all the source package records that match
 144      the given package names. All versions are shown, as well as all
 145      records that declare the name to be a Binary.</para></listitem>
 146      </varlistentry>
 147
 148      <varlistentry><term><option>dump</option></term>
 149      <listitem><para><literal>dump</literal> shows a short listing of every package in the cache. It is
 150      primarily for debugging.</para></listitem>
 151      </varlistentry>
 152
 153      <varlistentry><term><option>dumpavail</option></term>
 154      <listitem><para><literal>dumpavail</literal> prints out an available list to stdout. This is
 155      suitable for use with &dpkg; and is used by the &dselect; method.</para></listitem>
 156      </varlistentry>
 157
 158      <varlistentry><term><option>unmet</option></term>
 159      <listitem><para><literal>unmet</literal> displays a summary of all unmet dependencies in the
 160      package cache.</para></listitem>
 161      </varlistentry>
 162
 163      <varlistentry><term><option>show</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-pkg;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 164      <listitem><para><literal>show</literal> performs a function similar to
 165      <command>dpkg --print-avail</command>; it displays the package records for the
 166      named packages.</para></listitem>
 167      </varlistentry>
 168
 169      <varlistentry><term><option>search</option> <option><replaceable>&synopsis-regex;</replaceable>…</option></term>
 170      <listitem><para><literal>search</literal> performs a full text search on all available package
 171      lists for the POSIX regex pattern given, see
 172      <citerefentry><refentrytitle><command>regex</command></refentrytitle>
 173      <manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>.
 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 provides are triangles, mixed provides 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 unmet and depends. Causes only Depends and
 277      Pre-Depends relations to be printed.
 278      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Important</literal>.</para></listitem>
 279      </varlistentry>
 280
 281      <varlistentry><term><option>--no-pre-depends</option></term>
 282                    <term><option>--no-depends</option></term>
 283                    <term><option>--no-recommends</option></term>
 284                    <term><option>--no-suggests</option></term>
 285                    <term><option>--no-conflicts</option></term>
 286                    <term><option>--no-breaks</option></term>
 287                    <term><option>--no-replaces</option></term>
 288                    <term><option>--no-enhances</option></term>
 289                    <listitem><para>Per default the <literal>depends</literal> and
 290      <literal>rdepends</literal> print all dependencies. This can be tweaked with
 291      these flags which will omit the specified dependency type.
 292      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Show<replaceable>DependencyType</replaceable></literal>
 293      e.g. <literal>APT::Cache::ShowRecommends</literal>.</para></listitem>
 294      </varlistentry>
 295      <varlistentry><term><option>-f</option></term><term><option>--full</option></term>
 296      <listitem><para>Print full package records when searching.
 297      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::ShowFull</literal>.</para></listitem>
 298      </varlistentry>
 299
 300      <varlistentry><term><option>-a</option></term><term><option>--all-versions</option></term>
 301      <listitem><para>Print full records for all available versions. This is the
 302      default; to turn it off, use <option>--no-all-versions</option>.
 303      If <option>--no-all-versions</option> is specified, only the candidate version
 304      will displayed (the one which would be selected for installation).
 305      This option is only applicable to  the <literal>show</literal> command.
 306      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::AllVersions</literal>.</para></listitem>
 307      </varlistentry>
 308
 309      <varlistentry><term><option>-g</option></term><term><option>--generate</option></term>
 310      <listitem><para>Perform automatic package cache regeneration, rather than use the cache
 311      as it is. This is the default; to turn it off, use <option>--no-generate</option>.
 312      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Generate</literal>.</para></listitem>
 313      </varlistentry>
 314
 315      <varlistentry><term><option>--names-only</option></term><term><option>-n</option></term>
 316      <listitem><para>Only search on the package names, not the long descriptions.
 317      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::NamesOnly</literal>.</para></listitem>
 318      </varlistentry>
 319
 320      <varlistentry><term><option>--all-names</option></term>
 321      <listitem><para>Make <literal>pkgnames</literal> print all names, including virtual packages
 322      and missing dependencies.
 323      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::AllNames</literal>.</para></listitem>
 324      </varlistentry>
 325
 326      <varlistentry><term><option>--recurse</option></term>
 327      <listitem><para>Make <literal>depends</literal> and <literal>rdepends</literal> recursive so
 328      that all packages mentioned are printed once.
 329      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::RecurseDepends</literal>.</para></listitem>
 330      </varlistentry>
 331
 332       <varlistentry><term><option>--installed</option></term>
 333       <listitem><para>
 334       Limit the output of <literal>depends</literal> and <literal>rdepends</literal> to
 335       packages which are currently installed.
 336       Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Installed</literal>.</para></listitem>
 337       </varlistentry>
 338
 339      &apt-commonoptions;
 340
 341    </variablelist>
 342  </refsect1>
 343
 344  <refsect1><title>Files</title>
 345    <variablelist>
 346      &file-sourceslist;
 347      &file-statelists;
 348    </variablelist>
 349  </refsect1>
 350
 351  <refsect1><title>See Also</title>
 352    <para>&apt-conf;, &sources-list;, &apt-get;
 353    </para>
 354  </refsect1>
 355
 356  <refsect1><title>Diagnostics</title>
 357    <para><command>apt-cache</command> returns zero on normal operation, decimal 100 on error.
 358    </para>
 359  </refsect1>
 360
 361  &manbugs;
 362
 363 </refentry>