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Chapter 7

The Debian package management tools

7.1 What programs does Debian provide for managing its packages?

There are multiple tools that are used to manage Debian packages, from graphic or text based

interfaces to the low level tools used to install packages. All the available tools rely on the

lower level tools to properly work and are presented here in decreasing complexity level.

It is important to understand that the higher level package management tools such as

aptitude

or

dselect

rely on

apt

which, itself, relies on

dpkg

to manage the packages in

the system.

7.1.1 dpkg

This is the main package management program.

dpkg

can be invoked with many options.

Some common uses are:

  Find out all the options:

dpkg   help

.

  Print out the control file (and other information) for a specified package:

dpkg   info

foo_VVV RRR.deb

  Install a package (including unpacking and configuring) onto the file system of the hard

disk:

dpkg   install foo_VVV RRR.deb

.

  Unpack (but do not configure) a Debian archive into the file system of the hard disk:

dpkg   unpack foo_VVV RRR.deb

. Note that this operation does not necessarily

leave the package in a usable state; some files may need further customization to run

properly. This command removes any already installed version of the program and

runs the preinst (see `What is a Debian preinst, postinst, prerm, and postrm script?' on

page

28

) script associated with the package.