APT-FILE(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation APT-FILE(1)
NAME
apt-file -- APT package searching utility -- command-line interface
SYNOPSIS
apt-file [options] search pattern
apt-file [options] show package
DESCRIPTION
apt-file is a command line tool for searching files in packages for the
APT package management system.
Some actions are required to run the search:
find
Alias for search.
list
List the contents of a package. This action is very close to the
dpkg -L command except the package does not need to be installed or
fetched.
By default, the list action interprets its pattern as if
--fixed-string was specified.
list-indices
List the known Content indices and their status in a human readable
format. These indices can be searched via the -I option (when
enabled and after fetching the indices). The output is subject to
change without notice and is therefore unsuited for script usage /
automation.
For a machine-readable formats (e.g. automation), please use apt-
config dump (search for options starting with Acquire::IndexTargets)
and apt-get indextargets for checking the cache (Look for entries
with an Identifier field starting with Contents-).
Note that individual sources.list entries can override the global
default. Please consult sources.list(5) for more information on
advanced configuration of the sources.list files.
search
Search in which package a file is included. A list of all packages
containing the pattern pattern is returned.
Since Contents files does not contain directories, the pattern must
match (part of a) file name.
By default, the search action interprets its pattern as if
--substring-match was specified.
show
Alias for list.
update
This action that just calls apt update or apt-get update (depending
on whether a tty is available).
The only advantage using this over a regular apt update or apt-get
update directly is for the case where you have configured an apt-
file specific configuration (via the Dir::Etc::apt-file-main
configuration option). In that case, said configuration will be
included automatically.
OPTIONS
The following options are available:
-a, --architecture architecture[,...]
This option is useful if you search a package for a different
architecture from the one installed on your system.
It can be a comma-separated list for searching on multiple
architectures.
-c, --config-file APT config-file
Configuration File; Specify a configuration file to use. The program
will read the default configuration file and then this configuration
file. If configuration settings need to be set before the default
configuration files are parsed specify a file with the APT_CONFIG
environment variable. See apt.conf(5) for syntax information.
The configuration file will be read relative to when it appears on
the command line and can overwrite options that appear before it.
Note that the config file will also be passed to all APT tools
called by apt-file.
-D, --from-deb
Use contents of the given .deb archives(s) as patterns. Useful for
searching for file conflicts with other packages. Implies -F.
-f, --from-file
Read patterns from the given file(s), one per line. Use - as
filename for stdin. If no files are given, then the list will be
read from stdin. This is much faster than invoking apt-file many
times.
--filter-origins origin[,...]
Only search indices from the listed origins (e.g. "Debian").
This filter matches against the name listed in the Origin field from
the Release file.
If set to '*', this filter will be disabled (mostly useful for
overriding the setting in a configuration file)
Alias of the APT config option: apt-file::Search-Filter::Origin
--filter-suites suite[,...]
Only search indices from the listed suites or codenames (e.g.
"unstable").
This filter matches against the name listed in the Codename and
Suite fields from the Release file. This means that either
"unstable" or "sid" will match Debian's unstable suite.
If set to '*', this filter will be disabled (mostly useful for
overriding the setting in a configuration file)
Alias of the APT config option: apt-file::Search-Filter::Suite
-F, --fixed-string
Do not expand search pattern with generic characters at pattern's
start and end.
This is default for show and list actions.
--index-names type[,...], -I type[,...]
Only search indexes of the given name(s). If set to the special
value ALL (case-sensitive), then all apt-file indices are searched.
The name(s) must match one or more of the identifiers used in the
APT configuration (minus leading "Contents-"). Example if the
configuration has the following snippets:
Acquire::IndexTargets::deb::Contents-deb { ... };
Acquire::IndexTargets::deb-src::Contents-dsc { ... };
Acquire::IndexTargets::deb::Contents-udeb { ... };
Acquire::IndexTargets::deb::Contents-deb-legacy {
# Explicitly named to "Contents-deb"
Identifier "Contents-deb";
...;
};
Then, apt-file will recognise "deb", "dsc" and "udeb" as index
names.
This option defaults to the value of the "apt-file::Index-Names" apt
config option (or "deb" if omitted).
-i, --ignore-case
Ignore case when searching for pattern.
-l, --package-only
Only display package name; do not display file names.
--stream-results
This is a special-usage option useful for dealing with searches that
produce a high number of matches (10 000+) or/and automated
processing of results.
Disable deduplication logic and immediately emit a result when a
match is found.
This can greatly reduce the memory requirements for apt-file when
processing searches with many matches. It will also reduce the time
until the first match is emitted, which can be useful if matches can
be processed as they are discovered and the consumer can handle
duplicated matches.
-o, --option APT::Option=Value
Set a Configuration Option; This will set an arbitrary configuration
option. The syntax is -o APT::Option=Value. -o and --option can be
used multiple times to set different options.
This option can be used to overwrite other command line options
(e.g. "-o apt-file::Search-Filter::Origin=Debian" is effectively the
same as "--filter-origins Debian").
Note that the config options passed via this option will also be
passed to all APT tools called by apt-file.
--substring-match
Match if the given search pattern is a substring of a path or
package.
This is default for search and find actions.
-v, --verbose
Run apt-file in verbose/debug mode.
-x, --regexp
Treat pattern as a (perl) regular expression. See perlreref(1) for
details. Without this option, pattern is treated as a literal string
to search for.
Be advised that this option can be rather slow. If performance is
an issue, consider giving apt-file non-regex pattern matching too
much and pipe the output to perl -ne '/<pattern-here>/'. This
enables apt-file to use more optimizations and leaves less work to
the "slower" regex.
-h, --help
Display a short help screen.
CONFIGURATION FILES
The apt-file command relies on the APT configuration. Notably, the
default configuration makes apt fetch Contents files by default during a
call to apt update.
For information on how to configure APT to fetch more or fewer Contents
files, please refer to /usr/share/doc/apt-file/README.md.gz.
The following files are notably interesting:
/etc/apt/apt-file.conf
Note this path is actually configurable by changing the value of the
APT configuration called "Dir::Etc::apt-file-main". The listed
value is merely the default value of that option.
If this file is present, apt-file will read this file after all
default APT configuration files. Any config file -c or option (-o)
will be evaluated before this file (and can override options set in
it).
The file will also be passed on to all APT tools called by apt-file.
/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50apt-file.conf
Chooses which Contents files to download. Note that apt-file
recognises only "Acquire" targets that starts with "Contents-".
Special configurations similar to apt-file 2
Here are some apt-file 2 related work flows and how to (almost) emulate
them with apt-file 3. They are documented as a starting point for
people, who are attached to these.
The emulation may not be perfect for you out of the box. Patches are
welcome to keep the examples updated as long as the examples remain
"trivial".
• Only make apt-file update fetch Contents files
If you are accustomed to apt update not fetching Contents files,
then you can run
/usr/share/doc/apt-file/examples/apt-file-2-update.sh. This script
will configure apt and apt-file accordingly after best effort.
Please read the resulting /etc/apt/apt-file.conf.
• Creating/using "user" caches
Previous versions of apt-file had a "--cache" option, which could be
used to denote a directory to store the Contents files. This can be
emulated by doing:
# Setup
$ mkdir -p ~/.cache/apt-file ~/.config
$ touch ~/.cache/apt-file/dpkg-status
$ sed '/^Dir::State/ d; /^Dir::Cache/ d;' \
/usr/share/doc/apt-file/examples/apt-file.conf \
> ~/.config/apt-file.conf
$ cat <<EOF >> ~/.config/apt-file.conf
Dir::State "$HOME/.cache/apt-file";
Dir::Cache "$HOME/.cache/apt-file";
Dir::State::status "$HOME/.cache/apt-file/dpkg-status";
EOF
# Update the cache
$ apt-file -c ~/.config/apt-file.conf update
# Search using the cache
$ apt-file -c ~/.config/apt-file.conf show apt-file
# Removal of the cache + config
$ rm -fr ~/.cache/apt-file ~/.config/apt-file.conf
(You will probably want to add an alias apt-file in your ~/.bashrc)
Please read the resulting ./apt-file-user-cache.conf.
BUGS, QUIRKS
There are some known issues or "quirks" that are good to keep in mind.
• The Contents files do not include a leading slash on paths. This
means that /bin/ls is listed as bin/ls in the Contents file. If you
are looking for something in a top-level directory, it is often
better to omit the leading slash.
The search algorithm will attempt to work around the leading slash,
but it will not work in all cases. As a workaround, try to pull the
leading slash to the beginning of regular expressions. For example,
use "/(?:usr/bin/vim|sbin/lvm)" instead of
"/usr/bin/vim|/sbin/lvm".
• When a new line has been added to the sources.list and apt update
has not been run, apt-file does not print a warning message.
• By default, apt-file assumes that Contents files do not include a
descriptive header (explaining what the file is and how to interpret
it). However, some tools have generated them with such a header
(e.g. for old versions of Contents files for the Debian archive or
Contents files generated by reprepro prior to version 5.2.0).
If you search such files, you will want to set
apt-file::Parser::Check-For-Description-Header to true (e.g. in
/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50apt-file.conf) to have apt-file properly
filter out the headers to avoid false matches.
The reason this is not the default is that it costs a factor 2 in
overhead while most common Contents files no longer have the header.
(see #881405 for more details).
• Not all APT repositories have Contents files. Notably common
install media (CDs etc.) may omit them to conserve space.
The default configuration by apt-file marks Contents files as
optional and will just silently fail to search in Contents files in
such repositories.
EXIT CODES
apt-file has the following defined exit codes, which can be used for
scripting purposes.
0 apt-file returned successfully. If the command was a search, there
was at least one result.
1 apt-file completed a search successfully, but it had no results.
2 An error occurred (including invalid/conflicting user options).
3 apt-file could not complete the command because the cache was empty.
Please ensure there are indices enabled in the APT config and run
apt update to fetch them.
4 apt-file could not complete the command because the cache does not
have any files matching the restrictions. Either change the
restrictions (e.g. --index-names) or configure apt to fetch the
relevant files and run apt update.
255 There was an internal errors / uncaught exception in apt-file.
Please file a bug against apt-file.
Any other exit code is reserved for future use.
SEE ALSO
apt(1), apt-cache(8), apt.conf(5)
The APT users guide in /usr/share/doc/apt/
The example config in /usr/share/doc/apt-file/examples
The README at /usr/share/doc/apt-file/README.md.gz
perl v5.34.0 2022-09-10 APT-FILE(1)
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