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