6.3. The apt-cache
Command
The apt-cache
command can display much of the information stored in APT's internal database. This information is a sort of cache since it is gathered from the different sources listed in the sources.list
file. This happens during the aptitude update
operation.
The
apt-cache
command can do keyword-based package searches with
apt-cache search keyword
. It can also display the headers of the package's available versions with
apt-cache show package
. This command provides the package's description, its dependencies, the name of its maintainer, etc. Note that
aptitude search
and
aptitude show
work in the same way.
Some features are more rarely used. For instance,
apt-cache policy
displays the priorities of package sources as well as those of individual packages. Another example is
apt-cache dumpavail
which displays the headers of all available versions of all packages.
apt-cache pkgnames
displays the list of all the packages which appear at least once in the cache.