doc/apt-cache.8.xml

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   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  <!-- Arguments -->
  37  <refsynopsisdiv>
  38    <cmdsynopsis>
  39       <command>apt-cache</command>
  40       <arg><option>-hvsn</option></arg>
  41       <arg><option>-o=<replaceable>config string</replaceable></option></arg>
  42       <arg><option>-c=<replaceable>file</replaceable></option></arg>
  43       <group choice="req">
  44          <arg>gencaches</arg>
  45          <arg>showpkg <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  46          <arg>showsrc <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  47          <arg>stats</arg>
  48          <arg>dump</arg>
  49          <arg>dumpavail</arg>
  50          <arg>unmet</arg>
  51          <arg>search <arg choice="plain"><replaceable>regex</replaceable></arg></arg>
  52          <arg>show <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  53          <arg>depends <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  54          <arg>rdepends <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  55          <arg>pkgnames <arg choice="plain"><replaceable>prefix</replaceable></arg></arg>
  56          <arg>dotty <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  57          <arg>xvcg <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  58          <arg>policy <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkgs</replaceable></arg></arg>
  59          <arg>madison <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkgs</replaceable></arg></arg>
  60       </group>
  61    </cmdsynopsis>
  62  </refsynopsisdiv>
  63
  64  <refsect1><title>Description</title>
  65    <para><command>apt-cache</command> performs a variety of operations on APT's package
  66    cache. <command>apt-cache</command> does not manipulate the state of the system
  67    but does provide operations to search and generate interesting output
  68    from the package metadata.</para>
  69
  70    <para>Unless the <option>-h</option>, or <option>--help</option> option is given, one of the
  71    commands below must be present.</para>
  72
  73    <variablelist>
  74      <varlistentry><term>gencaches</term>
  75      <listitem><para><literal>gencaches</literal> performs the same operation as
  76      <command>apt-get check</command>. It builds the source and package caches from
  77      the sources in &sources-list; and from
  78      <filename>/var/lib/dpkg/status</filename>.</para></listitem>
  79      </varlistentry>
  80
  81      <varlistentry><term>showpkg <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
  82      <listitem><para><literal>showpkg</literal> displays information about the packages listed on the
  83      command line. Remaining arguments are package names. The available
  84      versions and reverse dependencies of each package listed are listed, as
  85      well as forward dependencies for each version. Forward (normal)
  86      dependencies are those packages upon which the package in question
  87      depends; reverse dependencies are those packages that depend upon the
  88      package in question. Thus, forward dependencies must be satisfied for a
  89      package, but reverse dependencies need not be.
  90      For instance, <command>apt-cache showpkg libreadline2</command> would produce
  91      output similar to the following:</para>
  92
  93 <informalexample><programlisting>
  94 Package: libreadline2
  95 Versions: 2.1-12(/var/state/apt/lists/foo_Packages),
  96 Reverse Depends:
  97   libreadlineg2,libreadline2
  98   libreadline2-altdev,libreadline2
  99 Dependencies:
 100 2.1-12 - libc5 (2 5.4.0-0) ncurses3.0 (0 (null))
 101 Provides:
 102 2.1-12 -
 103 Reverse Provides:
 104 </programlisting></informalexample>
 105
 106      <para>Thus it may be seen that libreadline2, version 2.1-12, depends on
 107      libc5 and ncurses3.0 which must be installed for libreadline2 to work.
 108      In turn, libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev depend on libreadline2. If
 109      libreadline2 is installed, libc5 and ncurses3.0 (and ldso) must also be
 110      installed; libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev do not have to be
 111      installed. For the specific meaning of the remainder of the output it
 112      is best to consult the apt source code.</para></listitem>
 113      </varlistentry>
 114
 115      <varlistentry><term>stats</term><listitem><para><literal>stats</literal> displays some statistics about the cache.
 116      No further arguments are expected. Statistics reported are:
 117      <itemizedlist>
 118        <listitem><para><literal>Total package names</literal> is the number of package names found
 119        in the cache.</para>
 120        </listitem>
 121
 122        <listitem><para><literal>Normal packages</literal> is the number of regular, ordinary package
 123        names; these are packages that bear a one-to-one correspondence between
 124        their names and the names used by other packages for them in
 125        dependencies. The majority of packages fall into this category.</para>
 126        </listitem>
 127
 128        <listitem><para><literal>Pure virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages that exist
 129        only as a virtual package name; that is, packages only "provide" the
 130        virtual package name, and no package actually uses the name. For
 131        instance, "mail-transport-agent" in the Debian GNU/Linux system is a
 132        pure virtual package; several packages provide "mail-transport-agent",
 133        but there is no package named "mail-transport-agent".</para>
 134        </listitem>
 135
 136        <listitem><para><literal>Single virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages with only
 137        one package providing a particular virtual package. For example, in the
 138        Debian GNU/Linux system, "X11-text-viewer" is a virtual package, but
 139        only one package, xless, provides "X11-text-viewer".</para>
 140        </listitem>
 141
 142        <listitem><para><literal>Mixed virtual packages</literal> is the number of packages that either
 143        provide a particular virtual package or have the virtual package name
 144        as the package name. For instance, in the Debian GNU/Linux system,
 145        "debconf" is both an actual package, and provided by the debconf-tiny
 146        package.</para>
 147        </listitem>
 148
 149        <listitem><para><literal>Missing</literal> is the number of package names that were referenced in
 150        a dependency but were not provided by any package. Missing packages may
 151        be an evidence if a full distribution is not accessed, or if a package
 152        (real or virtual) has been dropped from the distribution. Usually they
 153        are referenced from Conflicts or Breaks statements.</para>
 154        </listitem>
 155
 156        <listitem><para><literal>Total distinct</literal> versions is the number of package versions
 157        found in the cache; this value is therefore at least equal to the
 158        number of total package names. If more than one distribution (both
 159        "stable" and "unstable", for instance), is being accessed, this value
 160        can be considerably larger than the number of total package names.</para>
 161        </listitem>
 162
 163        <listitem><para><literal>Total dependencies</literal> is the number of dependency relationships
 164        claimed by all of the packages in the cache.</para>
 165        </listitem>
 166      </itemizedlist>
 167      </para></listitem>
 168      </varlistentry>
 169
 170      <varlistentry><term>showsrc <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 171      <listitem><para><literal>showsrc</literal> displays all the source package records that match
 172      the given package names. All versions are shown, as well as all
 173      records that declare the name to be a Binary.</para></listitem>
 174      </varlistentry>
 175
 176      <varlistentry><term>dump</term>
 177      <listitem><para><literal>dump</literal> shows a short listing of every package in the cache. It is
 178      primarily for debugging.</para></listitem>
 179      </varlistentry>
 180
 181      <varlistentry><term>dumpavail</term>
 182      <listitem><para><literal>dumpavail</literal> prints out an available list to stdout. This is
 183      suitable for use with &dpkg; and is used by the &dselect; method.</para></listitem>
 184      </varlistentry>
 185
 186      <varlistentry><term>unmet</term>
 187      <listitem><para><literal>unmet</literal> displays a summary of all unmet dependencies in the
 188      package cache.</para></listitem>
 189      </varlistentry>
 190
 191      <varlistentry><term>show <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 192      <listitem><para><literal>show</literal> performs a function similar to
 193      <command>dpkg --print-avail</command>; it displays the package records for the
 194      named packages.</para></listitem>
 195      </varlistentry>
 196
 197      <varlistentry><term>search <replaceable>regex [ regex ... ]</replaceable></term>
 198      <listitem><para><literal>search</literal> performs a full text search on all available package
 199      lists for the POSIX regex pattern given, see
 200      <citerefentry><refentrytitle><command>regex</command></refentrytitle>
 201      <manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>.
 202      It searches the package names and the
 203      descriptions for an occurrence of the regular expression and prints out
 204      the package name and the short description, including virtual package
 205      names.
 206      If <option>--full</option> is given
 207      then output identical to <literal>show</literal> is produced for each matched
 208      package, and if <option>--names-only</option> is given then the long description
 209      is not searched, only the package name is.</para>
 210      <para>
 211      Separate arguments can be used to specify multiple search patterns that
 212      are and'ed together.</para></listitem>
 213      </varlistentry>
 214
 215      <varlistentry><term>depends <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 216      <listitem><para><literal>depends</literal> shows a listing of each dependency a package has
 217      and all the possible other packages that can fulfill that dependency.</para></listitem>
 218      </varlistentry>
 219
 220      <varlistentry><term>rdepends <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 221      <listitem><para><literal>rdepends</literal> shows a listing of each reverse dependency a
 222       package has.</para></listitem>
 223      </varlistentry>
 224
 225      <varlistentry><term>pkgnames <replaceable>[ prefix ]</replaceable></term>
 226      <listitem><para>This command prints the name of each package APT knows. The optional
 227      argument is a prefix match to filter the name list. The output is suitable
 228      for use in a shell tab complete function and the output is generated
 229      extremely quickly. This command is best used with the
 230      <option>--generate</option> option.</para>
 231      <para>Note that a package which APT knows of is not necessarily available to download,
 232      installable or installed, e.g. virtual packages are also listed in the generated list.
 233      </para></listitem>
 234      </varlistentry>
 235
 236      <varlistentry><term>dotty <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 237      <listitem><para><literal>dotty</literal> takes a list of packages on the command line and
 238      generates output suitable for use by dotty from the
 239      <ulink url="http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/">GraphViz</ulink>
 240      package. The result will be a set of nodes and edges representing the
 241      relationships between the packages. By default the given packages will
 242      trace out all dependent packages; this can produce a very large graph.
 243      To limit the output to only the packages listed on the command line,
 244      set the <literal>APT::Cache::GivenOnly</literal> option.</para>
 245
 246      <para>The resulting nodes will have several shapes; normal packages are boxes,
 247      pure provides are triangles, mixed provides are diamonds,
 248      missing packages are hexagons. Orange boxes mean recursion was stopped
 249      [leaf packages], blue lines are pre-depends, green lines are conflicts.</para>
 250
 251      <para>Caution, dotty cannot graph larger sets of packages.</para></listitem>
 252      </varlistentry>
 253
 254      <varlistentry><term>xvcg <replaceable>pkg(s)</replaceable></term>
 255          <listitem><para>The same as <literal>dotty</literal>, only for xvcg from the
 256          <ulink url="http://rw4.cs.uni-sb.de/users/sander/html/gsvcg1.html">VCG tool</ulink>.
 257          </para></listitem></varlistentry>
 258
 259      <varlistentry><term>policy <replaceable>[ pkg(s) ]</replaceable></term>
 260      <listitem><para><literal>policy</literal> is meant to help debug issues relating to the
 261      preferences file. With no arguments it will print out the
 262      priorities of each source. Otherwise it prints out detailed information
 263      about the priority selection of the named package.</para></listitem>
 264      </varlistentry>
 265
 266      <varlistentry><term>madison <replaceable>[ pkg(s) ]</replaceable></term>
 267      <listitem><para><literal>apt-cache</literal>'s <literal>madison</literal> command attempts to mimic
 268      the output format and a subset of the functionality of the Debian
 269      archive management tool, <literal>madison</literal>.  It displays
 270      available versions of a package in a tabular format.  Unlike the
 271      original <literal>madison</literal>, it can only display information for
 272      the architecture for which APT has retrieved package lists
 273      (<literal>APT::Architecture</literal>).</para></listitem>
 274      </varlistentry>
 275    </variablelist>
 276  </refsect1>
 277
 278  <refsect1><title>options</title>
 279    &apt-cmdblurb;
 280
 281    <variablelist>
 282      <varlistentry><term><option>-p</option></term><term><option>--pkg-cache</option></term>
 283      <listitem><para>Select the file to store the package cache. The package cache is the
 284      primary cache used by all operations.
 285      Configuration Item: <literal>Dir::Cache::pkgcache</literal>.</para></listitem>
 286      </varlistentry>
 287
 288      <varlistentry><term><option>-s</option></term><term><option>--src-cache</option></term>
 289      <listitem><para>Select the file to store the source cache. The source is used only by
 290      <literal>gencaches</literal> and it stores a parsed version of the package
 291      information from remote sources. When building the package cache the
 292      source cache is used to avoid reparsing all of the package files.
 293      Configuration Item: <literal>Dir::Cache::srcpkgcache</literal>.</para></listitem>
 294      </varlistentry>
 295
 296      <varlistentry><term><option>-q</option></term><term><option>--quiet</option></term>
 297      <listitem><para>Quiet; produces output suitable for logging, omitting progress indicators.
 298      More q's will produce more quietness up to a maximum of 2. You can also use
 299      <option>-q=#</option> to set the quietness level, overriding the configuration file.
 300      Configuration Item: <literal>quiet</literal>.</para></listitem>
 301      </varlistentry>
 302
 303      <varlistentry><term><option>-i</option></term><term><option>--important</option></term>
 304      <listitem><para>Print only important dependencies; for use with unmet and depends. Causes only Depends and
 305      Pre-Depends relations to be printed.
 306      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Important</literal>.</para></listitem>
 307      </varlistentry>
 308
 309      <varlistentry><term><option>--no-pre-depends</option></term>
 310                    <term><option>--no-depends</option></term>
 311                    <term><option>--no-recommends</option></term>
 312                    <term><option>--no-suggests</option></term>
 313                    <term><option>--no-conflicts</option></term>
 314                    <term><option>--no-breaks</option></term>
 315                    <term><option>--no-replaces</option></term>
 316                    <term><option>--no-enhances</option></term>
 317                    <listitem><para>Per default the <literal>depends</literal> and
 318      <literal>rdepends</literal> print all dependencies. This can be tweaked with
 319      these flags which will omit the specified dependency type.
 320      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Show<replaceable>DependencyType</replaceable></literal>
 321      e.g. <literal>APT::Cache::ShowRecommends</literal>.</para></listitem>
 322      </varlistentry>
 323      <varlistentry><term><option>-f</option></term><term><option>--full</option></term>
 324      <listitem><para>Print full package records when searching.
 325      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::ShowFull</literal>.</para></listitem>
 326      </varlistentry>
 327
 328      <varlistentry><term><option>-a</option></term><term><option>--all-versions</option></term>
 329      <listitem><para>Print full records for all available versions. This is the
 330      default; to turn it off, use <option>--no-all-versions</option>.
 331      If <option>--no-all-versions</option> is specified, only the candidate version
 332      will displayed (the one which would be selected for installation).
 333      This option is only applicable to  the <literal>show</literal> command.
 334      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::AllVersions</literal>.</para></listitem>
 335      </varlistentry>
 336
 337      <varlistentry><term><option>-g</option></term><term><option>--generate</option></term>
 338      <listitem><para>Perform automatic package cache regeneration, rather than use the cache
 339      as it is. This is the default; to turn it off, use <option>--no-generate</option>.
 340      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Generate</literal>.</para></listitem>
 341      </varlistentry>
 342
 343      <varlistentry><term><option>--names-only</option></term><term><option>-n</option></term>
 344      <listitem><para>Only search on the package names, not the long descriptions.
 345      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::NamesOnly</literal>.</para></listitem>
 346      </varlistentry>
 347
 348      <varlistentry><term><option>--all-names</option></term>
 349      <listitem><para>Make <literal>pkgnames</literal> print all names, including virtual packages
 350      and missing dependencies.
 351      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::AllNames</literal>.</para></listitem>
 352      </varlistentry>
 353
 354      <varlistentry><term><option>--recurse</option></term>
 355      <listitem><para>Make <literal>depends</literal> and <literal>rdepends</literal> recursive so
 356      that all packages mentioned are printed once.
 357      Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::RecurseDepends</literal>.</para></listitem>
 358      </varlistentry>
 359
 360       <varlistentry><term><option>--installed</option></term>
 361       <listitem><para>
 362       Limit the output of <literal>depends</literal> and <literal>rdepends</literal> to
 363       packages which are currently installed.
 364       Configuration Item: <literal>APT::Cache::Installed</literal>.</para></listitem>
 365       </varlistentry>
 366
 367      &apt-commonoptions;
 368
 369    </variablelist>
 370  </refsect1>
 371
 372  <refsect1><title>Files</title>
 373    <variablelist>
 374      &file-sourceslist;
 375      &file-statelists;
 376    </variablelist>
 377  </refsect1>
 378
 379  <refsect1><title>See Also</title>
 380    <para>&apt-conf;, &sources-list;, &apt-get;
 381    </para>
 382  </refsect1>
 383
 384  <refsect1><title>Diagnostics</title>
 385    <para><command>apt-cache</command> returns zero on normal operation, decimal 100 on error.
 386    </para>
 387  </refsect1>
 388
 389  &manbugs;
 390
 391 </refentry>