Can someone tell me why dpkg updates the available file if you dpkg -i foo.deb (a previosuly unknown package that you manually downloaded)?
This must be pretty non-useful, since apt's dselect update method disregards any such changes dpkg makes, and just shoves in its own available file brute-force (apt-cache dumpavail > /var/lib/dpkg/available), disregarding the dpkg --update-avail or --merge-avail that a better citizen would use. And nobody seems to have complained that this looses data, though it can. -- see shy jo
