NAME
apt-cache - query the APT cacheSYNOPSIS
apt-cache
[ -agipns] [-o=config_string]
[-c=config_file] {gencaches |
showpkg pkg... | showsrc pkg... | stats | dump |
dumpavail | unmet | search regex... |
show pkg [{=
pkg_version_number | /target_release}]... |
depends
pkg [{=pkg_version_number | /
target_release}]... | rdepends
pkg [{=pkg_version_number | /
target_release}]... | pkgnames [ prefix] |
dotty pkg [{=pkg_version_number | /target_release}]...
| xvcg
pkg [{=pkg_version_number | /
target_release}]... | policy [ pkg...] |
madison pkg... | {-v | --version} |
{-h | --help}}
DESCRIPTION
apt-cache performs a variety of operations on APT's package cache. apt-cache does not manipulate the state of the system but does provide operations to search and generate interesting output from the package metadata. The metadata is acquired and updated via the 'update' command of e.g. apt-get, so that it can be outdated if the last update is too long ago, but in exchange apt-cache works independently of the availability of the configured sources (e.g. offline). Unless the -h, or --help option is given, one of the commands below must be present. gencachesgencaches creates APT's package cache. This is
done implicitly by all commands needing this cache if it is missing or
outdated.
showpkg pkg...
showpkg displays information about the
packages listed on the command line. Remaining arguments are package names.
The available versions and reverse dependencies of each package listed are
listed, as well as forward dependencies for each version. Forward (normal)
dependencies are those packages upon which the package in question depends;
reverse dependencies are those packages that depend upon the package in
question. Thus, forward dependencies must be satisfied for a package, but
reverse dependencies need not be. For instance, apt-cache showpkg
libreadline2 would produce output similar to the following:
Thus it may be seen that libreadline2, version 2.1-12, depends on libc5 and
ncurses3.0 which must be installed for libreadline2 to work. In turn,
libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev depend on libreadline2. If libreadline2
is installed, libc5 and ncurses3.0 (and ldso) must also be installed;
libreadlineg2 and libreadline2-altdev do not have to be installed. For the
specific meaning of the remainder of the output it is best to consult the apt
source code.
stats
Package: libreadline2 Versions: 2.1-12(/var/state/apt/lists/foo_Packages), Reverse Depends: libreadlineg2,libreadline2 libreadline2-altdev,libreadline2 Dependencies: 2.1-12 - libc5 (2 5.4.0-0) ncurses3.0 (0 (null)) Provides: 2.1-12 - Reverse Provides:
stats displays some statistics about the
cache. No further arguments are expected. Statistics reported are:
showsrc pkg...
•Total package names is the number of
package names found in the cache.
•Normal packages is the number of
regular, ordinary package names; these are packages that bear a one-to-one
correspondence between their names and the names used by other packages for
them in dependencies. The majority of packages fall into this category.
•Pure virtual packages is the number of
packages that exist only as a virtual package name; that is, packages only
"provide" the virtual package name, and no package actually uses the
name. For instance, "mail-transport-agent" in the Debian system is a
pure virtual package; several packages provide
"mail-transport-agent", but there is no package named
"mail-transport-agent".
•Single virtual packages is the number
of packages with only one package providing a particular virtual package. For
example, in the Debian system, "X11-text-viewer" is a virtual
package, but only one package, xless, provides
"X11-text-viewer".
•Mixed virtual packages is the number
of packages that either provide a particular virtual package or have the
virtual package name as the package name. For instance, in the Debian system,
"debconf" is both an actual package, and provided by the
debconf-tiny package.
•Missing is the number of package names
that were referenced in a dependency but were not provided by any package.
Missing packages may be an evidence if a full distribution is not accessed, or
if a package (real or virtual) has been dropped from the distribution. Usually
they are referenced from Conflicts or Breaks statements.
•Total distinct versions is the number
of package versions found in the cache. If more than one distribution is being
accessed (for instance, "stable" and "unstable"), this
value can be considerably larger than the number of total package names.
•Total dependencies is the number of
dependency relationships claimed by all of the packages in the cache.
showsrc displays all the source package
records that match the given package names. All versions are shown, as well as
all records that declare the name to be a binary package. Use
--only-source to display only source package names.
dump
dump shows a short listing of every package in
the cache. It is primarily for debugging.
dumpavail
dumpavail prints out an available list to
stdout. This is suitable for use with dpkg(1) and is used by the
dselect(1) method.
unmet
unmet displays a summary of all unmet
dependencies in the package cache.
show pkg...
show performs a function similar to dpkg
--print-avail; it displays the package records for the named
packages.
search regex...
search performs a full text search on all
available package lists for the POSIX regex pattern given, see
regex(7). It searches the package names and the descriptions for an
occurrence of the regular expression and prints out the package name and the
short description, including virtual package names. If --full is given
then output identical to show is produced for each matched package, and if
--names-only is given then the long description is not searched, only
the package name and provided packages are.
Separate arguments can be used to specify multiple search patterns that are
and'ed together.
depends pkg...
depends shows a listing of each dependency a
package has and all the possible other packages that can fulfill that
dependency.
rdepends pkg...
rdepends shows a listing of each reverse
dependency a package has.
pkgnames [prefix]
This command prints the name of each package
APT knows. The optional argument is a prefix match to filter the name list.
The output is suitable for use in a shell tab complete function and the output
is generated extremely quickly. This command is best used with the
--generate option.
Note that a package which APT knows of is not necessarily available to download,
installable or installed, e.g. virtual packages are also listed in the
generated list.
dotty pkg...
dotty takes a list of packages on the command
line and generates output suitable for use by dotty from the
GraphViz[1] package. The result will be a set of nodes and edges
representing the relationships between the packages. By default the given
packages will trace out all dependent packages; this can produce a very large
graph. To limit the output to only the packages listed on the command line,
set the APT::Cache::GivenOnly option.
The resulting nodes will have several shapes; normal packages are boxes, pure
virtual packages are triangles, mixed virtual packages are diamonds, missing
packages are hexagons. Orange boxes mean recursion was stopped (leaf
packages), blue lines are pre-depends, green lines are conflicts.
Caution, dotty cannot graph larger sets of packages.
xvcg pkg...
The same as dotty, only for xvcg from the
VCG tool[2].
policy [pkg...]
policy is meant to help debug issues relating
to the preferences file. With no arguments it will print out the priorities of
each source. Otherwise it prints out detailed information about the priority
selection of the named package.
madison pkg...
apt-cache's madison command attempts to mimic
the output format and a subset of the functionality of the Debian archive
management tool, madison. It displays available versions of a package in a
tabular format. Unlike the original madison, it can only display information
for the architecture for which APT has retrieved package lists
(APT::Architecture).
OPTIONS
All command line options may be set using the configuration file, the descriptions indicate the configuration option to set. For boolean options you can override the config file by using something like -f-,--no-f, -f=no or several other variations. -p, --pkg-cacheSelect the file to store the package cache.
The package cache is the primary cache used by all operations. Configuration
Item: Dir::Cache::pkgcache.
-s, --src-cache
Select the file to store the source cache. The
source is used only by gencaches and it stores a parsed version of the package
information from remote sources. When building the package cache the source
cache is used to avoid reparsing all of the package files. Configuration Item:
Dir::Cache::srcpkgcache.
-q, --quiet
Quiet; produces output suitable for logging,
omitting progress indicators. More q's will produce more quietness up to a
maximum of 2. You can also use -q=# to set the quietness level,
overriding the configuration file. Configuration Item: quiet.
-i, --important
Print only important dependencies; for use
with unmet and depends. Causes only Depends and Pre-Depends relations to be
printed. Configuration Item: APT::Cache::Important.
--no-pre-depends, --no-depends, --no-recommends,
--no-suggests, --no-conflicts, --no-breaks,
--no-replaces, --no-enhances
Per default the depends and
rdepends print all dependencies. This can be tweaked with these flags
which will omit the specified dependency type. Configuration Item:
APT::Cache::Show DependencyType e.g. APT::Cache::ShowRecommends.
--implicit
Per default depends and rdepends
print only dependencies explicitly expressed in the metadata. With this flag
it will also show dependencies implicitly added based on the encountered data.
A Conflicts: foo e.g. expresses implicitly that this package also conflicts
with the package foo from any other architecture. Configuration Item:
APT::Cache::ShowImplicit.
-f, --full
Print full package records when searching.
Configuration Item: APT::Cache::ShowFull.
-a, --all-versions
Print full records for all available versions.
This is the default; to turn it off, use --no-all-versions. If
--no-all-versions is specified, only the candidate version will be
displayed (the one which would be selected for installation). This option is
only applicable to the show command. Configuration Item:
APT::Cache::AllVersions.
-g, --generate
Perform automatic package cache regeneration,
rather than use the cache as it is. This is the default; to turn it off, use
--no-generate. Configuration Item: APT::Cache::Generate.
--names-only, -n
Only search on the package and provided
package names, not the long descriptions. Configuration Item:
APT::Cache::NamesOnly.
--all-names
Make pkgnames print all names, including
virtual packages and missing dependencies. Configuration Item:
APT::Cache::AllNames.
--recurse
Make depends and rdepends recursive so that
all packages mentioned are printed once. Configuration Item:
APT::Cache::RecurseDepends.
--installed
Limit the output of depends and rdepends to
packages which are currently installed. Configuration Item:
APT::Cache::Installed.
--with-source filename
Adds the given file as a source for metadata.
Can be repeated to add multiple files. Supported are currently *.deb, *.dsc,
*.changes, Sources and Packages files as well as source package directories.
Files are matched based on their name only, not their content!
Sources and Packages can be compressed in any format apt supports as long as
they have the correct extension. If you need to store multiple of these files
in one directory you can prefix a name of your choice with the last character
being an underscore ("_"). Example: my.example_Packages.xz
Note that these sources are treated as trusted (see apt-secure(8)).
Configuration Item: APT::Sources::With.
-h, --help
Show a short usage summary.
-v, --version
Show the program version.
-c, --config-file
Configuration File; Specify a configuration
file to use. The program will read the default configuration file and then
this configuration file. If configuration settings need to be set before the
default configuration files are parsed specify a file with the
APT_CONFIG environment variable. See apt.conf(5) for syntax
information.
-o, --option
Set a Configuration Option; This will set an
arbitrary configuration option. The syntax is -o Foo::Bar=bar.
-o and --option can be used multiple times to set different
options.
FILES
/etc/apt/sources.listLocations to fetch packages from.
Configuration Item: Dir::Etc::SourceList.
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/
File fragments for locations to fetch packages
from. Configuration Item: Dir::Etc::SourceParts.
/var/lib/apt/lists/
Storage area for state information for each
package resource specified in sources.list(5) Configuration Item:
Dir::State::Lists.
/var/lib/apt/lists/partial/
Storage area for state information in transit.
Configuration Item: Dir::State::Lists (partial will be implicitly
appended)
SEE ALSO
apt.conf(5), sources.list(5), apt-get(8)DIAGNOSTICS
apt-cache returns zero on normal operation, decimal 100 on error.BUGS
APT bug page[3]. If you wish to report a bug in APT, please see /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt or the reportbug(1) command.AUTHORS
Jason Gunthorpe APT teamNOTES
- 1.
- GraphViz
- 2.
- VCG tool
- 3.
- APT bug page
| 04 April 2019 | APT 2.6.1 |