doc/apt-cache.8.sgml

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   4 <!ENTITY % aptent SYSTEM "apt.ent">
   5 %aptent;
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   8
   9 <refentry>
  10  &apt-docinfo;
  11
  12  <refmeta>
  13    <refentrytitle>apt-cache</>
  14    <manvolnum>8</>
  15  </refmeta>
  16
  17  <!-- Man page title -->
  18  <refnamediv>
  19     <refname>apt-cache</>
  20     <refpurpose>APT package handling utility -- cache manipulator</>
  21  </refnamediv>
  22
  23  <!-- Arguments -->
  24  <refsynopsisdiv>
  25    <cmdsynopsis>
  26       <command>apt-cache</>
  27       <arg><option>-hvsn</></arg>
  28       <arg><option>-o=<replaceable/config string/</></arg>
  29       <arg><option>-c=<replaceable/file/</></arg>
  30       <group choice=req>
  31          <arg>add <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>file</replaceable></arg></arg>
  32          <arg>gencaches</>
  33          <arg>showpkg <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  34          <arg>showsrc <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  35          <arg>stats</>
  36          <arg>dump</>
  37          <arg>dumpavail</>
  38          <arg>unmet</>
  39          <arg>search <arg choice="plain"><replaceable>regex</replaceable></arg></arg>
  40          <arg>show <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  41          <arg>depends <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  42          <arg>rdepends <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  43          <arg>pkgnames <arg choice="plain"><replaceable>prefix</replaceable></arg></arg>
  44          <arg>dotty <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkg</replaceable></arg></arg>
  45          <arg>policy <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkgs</replaceable></arg></arg>
  46          <arg>madison <arg choice="plain" rep="repeat"><replaceable>pkgs</replaceable></arg></arg>
  47       </group>
  48    </cmdsynopsis>
  49  </refsynopsisdiv>
  50
  51  <RefSect1><Title>Description</>
  52    <para>
  53    <command/apt-cache/ performs a variety of operations on APT's package
  54    cache. <command/apt-cache/ does not manipulate the state of the system
  55    but does provide operations to search and generate interesting output
  56    from the package metadata.
  57
  58    <para>
  59    Unless the <option/-h/, or <option/--help/ option is given, one of the
  60    commands below must be present.
  61
  62    <VariableList>
  63      <VarListEntry><Term>add <replaceable/file(s)/</Term>
  64      <ListItem><Para>
  65      <literal/add/ adds the named package index files to the package cache.
  66      This is for debugging only.
  67      </VarListEntry>
  68
  69      <VarListEntry><Term>gencaches</Term>
  70      <ListItem><Para>
  71      <literal/gencaches/ performs the same operation as
  72      <command/apt-get check/. It builds the source and package caches from
  73      the sources in &sources-list; and from <filename>/var/lib/dpkg/status</>.
  74      </VarListEntry>
  75
  76      <VarListEntry><Term>showpkg <replaceable/pkg(s)/</Term>
  77      <ListItem><Para>
  78      <literal/showpkg/ displays information about the packages listed on the
  79      command line. Remaining arguments are package names. The available
  80      versions and reverse dependencies of each package listed are listed, as
  81      well as forward dependencies for each version. Forward (normal)
  82      dependencies are those packages upon which the package in question
  83      depends; reverse dependencies are those packages that depend upon the
  84      package in question. Thus, forward dependencies must be satisfied for a
  85      package, but reverse dependencies need not be.
  86      For instance, <command>apt-cache showpkg libreadline2</> would produce
  87      output similar to the following:
  88
  89 <informalexample><programlisting>
  90 Package: libreadline2
  91 Versions: 2.1-12(/var/state/apt/lists/foo_Packages),
  92 Reverse Depends:
  93   libreadlineg2,libreadline2
  94   libreadline2-altdev,libreadline2
  95 Dependencies:
  96 2.1-12 - libc5 (2 5.4.0-0) ncurses3.0 (0 (null))
  97 Provides:
  98 2.1-12 -
  99 Reverse Provides:
 100 </programlisting></informalexample>
 101
 102      <para>
 103      Thus it may be seen that libreadline2, version 2.1-12, depends on libc5 and
 104      ncurses3.0 which must be installed for libreadline2 to work.
 105      In turn, libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev depend on libreadline2. If
 106      libreadline2 is installed, libc5 and ncurses3.0 (and ldso) must also be
 107      installed; libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev do not have to be
 108      installed. For the specific meaning of the remainder of the output it
 109      is best to consult the apt source code.
 110      </VarListEntry>
 111
 112      <VarListEntry><Term>stats</Term>
 113      <ListItem><Para>
 114      <literal/stats/ displays some statistics about the cache.
 115      No further arguments are expected. Statistics reported are:
 116      <itemizedlist>
 117        <listitem><para>
 118        <literal/Total package names/ is the number of package names found
 119        in the cache.
 120        </listitem>
 121
 122        <listitem><para>
 123        <literal/Normal packages/ is the number of regular, ordinary package
 124        names; these are packages that bear a one-to-one correspondence between
 125        their names and the names used by other packages for them in
 126        dependencies. The majority of packages fall into this category.
 127        </listitem>
 128
 129        <listitem><para>
 130        <literal/Pure virtual packages/ 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".
 136        </listitem>
 137
 138        <listitem><para>
 139        <literal/Single virtual packages/ is the number of packages with only
 140        one package providing a particular virtual package. For example, in the
 141        Debian GNU/Linux system, "X11-text-viewer" is a virtual package, but
 142        only one package, xless, provides "X11-text-viewer".
 143        </listitem>
 144
 145        <listitem><para>
 146        <literal/Mixed virtual packages/ is the number of packages that either
 147        provide a particular virtual package or have the virtual package name
 148        as the package name. For instance, in the Debian GNU/Linux system,
 149        "debconf" is both an actual package, and provided by the debconf-tiny
 150        package.
 151        </listitem>
 152
 153        <listitem><para>
 154        <literal/Missing/ is the number of package names that were referenced in
 155        a dependency but were not provided by any package. Missing packages may
 156        be in evidence if a full distribution is not accessed, or if a package
 157        (real or virtual) has been dropped from the distribution. Usually they
 158        are referenced from Conflicts statements.
 159        </listitem>
 160
 161        <listitem><para>
 162        <literal/Total distinct/ versions is the number of package versions
 163        found in the cache; this value is therefore at least equal to the
 164        number of total package names. If more than one distribution (both
 165        "stable" and "unstable", for instance), is being accessed, this value
 166        can be considerably larger than the number of total package names.
 167        </listitem>
 168
 169        <listitem><para>
 170        <literal/Total dependencies/ is the number of dependency relationships
 171        claimed by all of the packages in the cache.
 172        </listitem>
 173      </itemizedlist>
 174      </VarListEntry>
 175
 176      <VarListEntry><Term>showsrc <replaceable/pkg(s)/</Term>
 177      <ListItem><Para>
 178      <literal/showsrc/ displays all the source package records that match
 179      the given package names. All versions are shown, as well as all
 180      records that declare the name to be a Binary.
 181      </VarListEntry>
 182
 183      <VarListEntry><Term>dump</Term>
 184      <ListItem><Para>
 185      <literal/dump/ shows a short listing of every package in the cache. It is
 186      primarily for debugging.
 187      </VarListEntry>
 188
 189      <VarListEntry><Term>dumpavail</Term>
 190      <ListItem><Para>
 191      <literal/dumpavail/ prints out an available list to stdout. This is
 192      suitable for use with &dpkg; and is used by the &dselect; method.
 193      </VarListEntry>
 194
 195      <VarListEntry><Term>unmet</Term>
 196      <ListItem><Para>
 197      <literal/unmet/ displays a summary of all unmet dependencies in the
 198      package cache.
 199      </VarListEntry>
 200
 201      <VarListEntry><Term>show <replaceable/pkg(s)/</Term>
 202      <ListItem><Para>
 203      <literal/show/ performs a function similar to
 204      <command>dpkg --print-avail</>i; it displays the package records for the
 205      named packages.
 206      </VarListEntry>
 207
 208      <VarListEntry><Term>search <replaceable/regex [ regex ... ]/</Term>
 209      <ListItem><Para>
 210      <literal/search/ performs a full text search on all available package
 211      lists for the regex pattern given. It searches the package names and the
 212      descriptions for an occurrence of the regular expression and prints out
 213      the package name and the short description. If <option/--full/ is given
 214      then output identical to <literal/show/ is produced for each matched
 215      package, and if <option/--names-only/ is given then the long description
 216      is not searched, only the package name is.
 217      <para>
 218      Separate arguments can be used to specify multiple search patterns that
 219      are and'ed together.
 220      </VarListEntry>
 221
 222      <VarListEntry><Term>depends <replaceable/pkg(s)/</Term>
 223      <ListItem><Para>
 224      <literal/depends/ shows a listing of each dependency a package has
 225      and all the possible other packages that can fulfill that dependency.
 226      </VarListEntry>
 227
 228      <VarListEntry><Term>rdepends <replaceable/pkg(s)/</Term>
 229      <ListItem><Para>
 230      <literal/rdepends/ shows a listing of each reverse dependency a package
 231      has.
 232      </VarListEntry>
 233
 234      <VarListEntry><Term>pkgnames <replaceable/[ prefix ]/</Term>
 235      <ListItem><Para>
 236      This command prints the name of each package in the system. The optional
 237      argument is a prefix match to filter the name list. The output is suitable
 238      for use in a shell tab complete function and the output is generated
 239      extremely quickly. This command is best used with the
 240      <option/--generate/ option.
 241      </VarListEntry>
 242
 243      <VarListEntry><Term>dotty <replaceable/pkg(s)/</Term>
 244      <ListItem><Para>
 245      <literal/dotty/ takes a list of packages on the command line and
 246      generates output suitable for use by dotty from the
 247      <ulink url="http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/">GraphViz</>
 248      package. The result will be a set of nodes and edges representing the
 249      relationships between the packages. By default the given packages will
 250      trace out all dependent packages; this can produce a very large graph.
 251      To limit the output to only the packages listed on the command line,
 252      set the <literal>APT::Cache::GivenOnly</> option.
 253
 254      <para>
 255      The resulting nodes will have several shapes; normal packages are boxes,
 256      pure provides are triangles, mixed provides are diamonds,
 257      missing packages are hexagons. Orange boxes mean recursion was stopped
 258      [leaf packages], blue lines are pre-depends, green lines are conflicts.
 259
 260      <para>
 261      Caution, dotty cannot graph larger sets of packages.
 262
 263      <VarListEntry><Term>policy <replaceable/[ pkg(s) ]/</Term>
 264      <ListItem><Para>
 265      <literal/policy/ is ment to help debug issues relating to the
 266      preferences file. With no arguments it will print out the
 267      priorities of each source. Otherwise it prints out detailed information
 268      about the priority selection of the named package.
 269      </VarListEntry>
 270
 271      <VarListEntry><Term>madison <replaceable/[ pkg(s) ]/</Term>
 272      <ListItem><Para>
 273
 274      <literal/apt-cache/'s <literal/madison/ command attempts to mimic
 275      the output format and a subset of the functionality of the katie
 276      program, <literal/madison/.  It displays available versions of a
 277      package in a tabular format.  Unlike the original
 278      <literal/madison/, it can only display information for the
 279      architecture for which APT has rerieved package lists
 280      (<literal/APT::Architecture/).
 281
 282      </VarListEntry>
 283    </VariableList>
 284  </RefSect1>
 285
 286  <RefSect1><Title>Options</>
 287    &apt-cmdblurb;
 288
 289    <VariableList>
 290      <VarListEntry><term><option/-p/</><term><option/--pkg-cache/</>
 291      <ListItem><Para>
 292      Select the file to store the package cache. The package cache is the
 293      primary cache used by all operations.
 294      Configuration Item: <literal/Dir::Cache::pkgcache/.
 295      </VarListEntry>
 296
 297      <VarListEntry><term><option/-s/</><term><option/--src-cache/</>
 298      <ListItem><Para>
 299      Select the file to store the source cache. The source is used only by
 300      <literal/gencaches/ and it stores a parsed version of the package
 301      information from remote sources. When building the package cache the
 302      source cache is used to advoid reparsing all of the package files.
 303      Configuration Item: <literal/Dir::Cache::srcpkgcache/.
 304      </VarListEntry>
 305
 306      <VarListEntry><term><option/-q/</><term><option/--quiet/</>
 307      <ListItem><Para>
 308      Quiet; produces output suitable for logging, omitting progress indicators.
 309      More q's will produce more quietness up to a maximum of 2. You can also use
 310      <option/-q=#/ to set the quietness level, overriding the configuration file.
 311      Configuration Item: <literal/quiet/.
 312      </VarListEntry>
 313
 314      <VarListEntry><term><option/-i/</><term><option/--important/</>
 315      <ListItem><Para>
 316      Print only important dependencies; for use with unmet. Causes only Depends and
 317      Pre-Depends relations to be printed.
 318      Configuration Item: <literal/APT::Cache::Important/.
 319      </VarListEntry>
 320
 321      <VarListEntry><term><option/-f/</><term><option/--full/</>
 322      <ListItem><Para>
 323      Print full package records when searching.
 324      Configuration Item: <literal/APT::Cache::ShowFull/.
 325      </VarListEntry>
 326
 327      <VarListEntry><term><option/-a/</><term><option/--all-versions/</>
 328      <ListItem><Para>
 329      Print full records for all available versions. This is the
 330      default; to turn it off, use <option/--no-all-versions/.
 331      If <option/--no-all-versions/ 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/ command.
 334      Configuration Item: <literal/APT::Cache::AllVersions/.
 335      </VarListEntry>
 336
 337      <VarListEntry><term><option/-g/</><term><option/--generate/</>
 338      <ListItem><Para>
 339      Perform automatic package cache regeneration, rather than use the cache
 340      as it is. This is the default; to turn it off, use <option/--no-generate/.
 341      Configuration Item: <literal/APT::Cache::Generate/.
 342      </VarListEntry>
 343
 344      <VarListEntry><term><option/--names-only/</><term><option/-n/</>
 345      <ListItem><Para>
 346      Only search on the package names, not the long descriptions.
 347      Configuration Item: <literal/APT::Cache::NamesOnly/.
 348      </VarListEntry>
 349
 350      <VarListEntry><term><option/--all-names/</>
 351      <ListItem><Para>
 352      Make <literal/pkgnames/ print all names, including virtual packages
 353      and missing dependencies.
 354      Configuration Item: <literal/APT::Cache::AllNames/.
 355      </VarListEntry>
 356
 357      <VarListEntry><term><option/--recurse/</>
 358      <ListItem><Para>
 359      Make <literal/depends/ and <literal/rdepends/ recursive so that
 360      all packages mentioned are printed once.
 361      Configuration Item: <literal/APT::Cache::RecurseDepends/.
 362      </VarListEntry>
 363
 364      <VarListEntry><term><option/--installed/</>
 365      <ListItem><Para>
 366      Limit the output of <literal/depends/ and <literal/rdepends/ to
 367      packages which are currently installed.
 368      Configuration Item: <literal/APT::Cache::Installed/.
 369      </VarListEntry>
 370
 371      &apt-commonoptions;
 372
 373    </VariableList>
 374  </RefSect1>
 375
 376  <RefSect1><Title>Files</>
 377    <variablelist>
 378      <VarListEntry><term><filename>/etc/apt/sources.list</></term>
 379      <ListItem><Para>
 380      Locations to fetch packages from.
 381      Configuration Item: <literal/Dir::Etc::SourceList/.
 382      </VarListEntry>
 383
 384      <VarListEntry><term><filename>&statedir;/lists/</></term>
 385      <ListItem><Para>
 386      Storage area for state information for each package resource specified in
 387      &sources-list;
 388      Configuration Item: <literal/Dir::State::Lists/.
 389      </VarListEntry>
 390
 391      <VarListEntry><term><filename>&statedir;/lists/partial/</></term>
 392      <ListItem><Para>
 393      Storage area for state information in transit.
 394      Configuration Item: <literal/Dir::State::Lists/ (implicit partial).
 395      </VarListEntry>
 396    </variablelist>
 397  </RefSect1>
 398
 399  <RefSect1><Title>See Also</>
 400    <para>
 401    &apt-conf;, &sources-list;, &apt-get;
 402  </RefSect1>
 403
 404  <RefSect1><Title>Diagnostics</>
 405    <para>
 406    <command/apt-cache/ returns zero on normal operation, decimal 100 on error.
 407  </RefSect1>
 408
 409  &manbugs;
 410  &manauthor;
 411
 412 </refentry>