On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 11:26:44AM -0700, Akkana Peck wrote: > David Nusinow writes: > > In addition to the apt-file command already mentioned, there's > > packages.debian.org, which is able to search package contents for you. If > > you > > happen to wander in to the gauntlet that is #debian on freenode, it's often > > abbreviated "p.d.o" because it's so useful. > > We were talking about that on #d-w the other day, and I mentioned > that I seldom used the web page because it seemed like a hassle to > scroll to the right place, click in the text field, type in my > search string, then change the dropdown to something other than > "stable". But apt-cache search, aptitude search, and dpkg -l > all show lots of outdated packages that don't actually exist, > and I wanted some way of querying only for real packages. > So I got motivated to make commandline aliases to handle > querying for packages and files in sarge and sid.
Just a note: Suggestions on how to improve the user experience with packages.debian.org are always welcome and I would encourage anyone to report such things in a mail to the BTS (package www.debian.org) or a personal mail to me :) </packages.d.o maintainer hat off> The problem with the current search solutions may be that you have to know to much about how they actually work. Otherwise things like the fact that apt-file may return outdated data when questioned about sid/sarge packages (due to the weekly update of the Contents files you may end with the data from two weeks ago if you run apt-file update weekly and the job has a bad timing) or the problem that it returns results twice or trice if you have more than one Debian dist in your sources.list may puzzle one. apt-cache on the other hand searches your downloaded Packages files without any check wether including these sources in your sources.list makes any sense. Don't know if that explains your bad experiences with it though... Gruesse, -- Frank Lichtenheld <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> www: http://www.djpig.de/
