Listing Available Update Packages in Debian Systems
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Thanks. I just wondered if there was something more clever. My goal is to do something akin to Windows patch management, and the first step is to find available updates for installed software. It's harder without any central authority, as in the Windows world.
This is an excellent tip, but the problem is that I can't count on my customers with Debian distros having apt-show-versions installed. I need to write something that will work for all Debian users.
Okay, in my program, I am getting the names of available updates from:
apt-get-upgrade -s | grep Inst
That works well, but how can I obtain additional information about an available (but not yet downloaded) update for an installed app?
Again, I am not doing this by hand, but programatically, and I have no control over what software is available where my program will be run, so I cannot use esoteric utilities which my users may not have.
I am obligated to report descriptive information about each available update to help the user decide whether to install it. "apt-cache policy <package>" doesn't report anything which seems to be of interest, but examining the apt-cache options, I see that "apt-cache show <package>" does.
Last edited by Brandon9000; 04-25-2012 at 07:31 AM.
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