phpman > man > apt-cache(8)

APT-CACHE(8)                                     APT                                    APT-CACHE(8)



NAME
       apt-cache - query the APT cache

SYNOPSIS
       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       'update' command of e.g.  apt-get, so that it can be outdated if the last update is too long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.

       gencaches
           gencaches 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           this cache if it is missing or outdated.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:

               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:
           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
           stats displays some statistics about the cache. No further arguments are expected.
           Statistics reported are:

           •   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 pkg...
           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-cache
           Select 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::ShowDependencyType 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.list
           Locations 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 team

NOTES
        1. GraphViz
           http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/

        2. VCG tool
           http://rw4.cs.uni-sb.de/users/sander/html/gsvcg1.html

        3. APT bug page
           http://bugs.debian.org/src:apt



APT 2.4.14                                  04 April 2019                               APT-CACHE(8)