bugsquad-mentorship-group-alpha team mailing list archive

[C de-Avillez <hggdh2@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 03/29/2011 10:12 AM, Joseph Areeda wrote:
> That is one of my issues that I'm looking for a solution.  Most
> package names are meaningless to me and my research on what they are
> is hoping for something informative in the first few pages of google.

This will happen, I am afraid, continuously -- no visible way to
connect an application/programme/file to a package.

One easy way is to run 'synaptic' or the Ubuntu Software Centre,
search for the package name, and read the description. Yeah, I know,
succinct, but a step in the right direction.

Sometimes we need to go the other way -- from a programme name (or,
generically, *any* file) to a package. There are some ways to do it
also:

you have the *programme* (or a file) name -- then you can use any of
the following on a terminal

* dpkg -S <string>

Replace <string> by whatever you want to find.

'dpkg' is the low-level package manager; it can do a *lot* of
different things, see 'man dpkg'. One of these possible use is to
_search_ for a string. The major shortcoming is it can only search
on the *installed* (on the machine it is running) packages.

* apt-file search <string>

Similar to 'dpkg -S' but it will search on all packages you have
visibility to (i.e., from the repositories listed on
/etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*). You will need
to install it first, it is not part of the default Ubuntu offerings:

sudo apt-get install apt-file

Of course, there are still some issues: you will get a line in
output for *each* time the <string> appears. For example, on Natty,
if I search for 'ubuntu', I get 9,451 lines showing packages (and
files) where the string 'ubuntu' appears.

More later.

..C..

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature