Devuan Package Information

The tool is a "web front-end" for the command line utilites apt-cache policy, apt-cache show, apt-file list, debtree and apt-file find that are used for reviewing the meta information of the available software. You may well use those tools in your own terminal to see this information related more exactly to your own system, whereas here you’ll see it related to "all" possible installations in union.

When you inspect the web front-end in more detail, you will find that the "Package pattern:" phrase is actually a selection toggle where you can choose between that and "File pattern:". The former uses the pattern as argument to apt-cache policy and brings up the result of that, and the latter instead uses the pattern as argument to apt-file find and brings up the result of that. Note that both of the search types are time limited and that if the pattern is too generic, it results in a search timeout response.

The policy-query result includes onwards links from the version code elements as package-query requests with the particular package and version as argument. This runs apt-cache show followed by an apt-file list and presents the result of that with dependent package names set out as links to further policy-query requests.

The package-query result also includes a "debtree" button for reviewing the package dependencies using debtree.

When the selection toggle says "File pattern:", the tool will run apt-file find with the pattern as argument (instead of apt-get policy) and present the result of that. This has similar onwards links as policy-query requests for the package names.

Note that all results are heavily flavoured by the backend setup. The servicing host has a source list that includes all (and only) current Devuan points for the architectures amd64, arm64 and i386, while it is an amd64 itself. In some cases it helps to add, e.g., ":arm64" to the end of the pattern so as to focus the search on that architecture, but it's of course up to the backend command as to whether that is useful.

Enjoy