I took a stab at implementing the dbrief concept that I described previously. This tool is useful for me, and I am providing it in the hope that other users find it useful as well. please check out my work at http://dbrief.sourceforge.net and provide feedback.
mike > thank you for all of the interesting comments. > what I am getting at is that there should be a simple way for the user > to discover what he or she just installed. "dpkg -L <package name>", > which is a good start, gives you information about installed files, > but the command itself is not easily discoverable (i didn't know about > it, and i've been a Debian user for 1.5 years). > there also isn't an easy way to discover package documentation. yes, > you can "$ cat /usr/share/doc/<package name>/README.Debian". again, > this is not discoverable, and often there isn't good information there > anyway. plus, i'm lazy, and that's a lot of path typing. > maybe what is needed is an option something like "$ dpkg -B foo" or "$ > dbrief foo", which would produce a brief output something like: > foo Debian README: > <output of $(cat /usr/share/doc/foo/Debian.README)> > foo upstream README: > <output of $(zcat /usr/share/doc/foo/README.gz)> > foo help: > <maybe the output of $(foo --help)> > foo binaries: > /usr/bin/foo > . > . > . > well, again, "$ dpkg -B" and "$ dbrief" aren't exactly discoverable. > i don't know if any shell commands are really that discoverable. > however, if users were trained (via release documentation) that this > is how to discover new packages, i think it would be very useful. > the above would be useful in synaptic as well as a compliment to > "browse documentation." > more thoughts/ideas? > mike
