dcontrol1

Usage

Overview

dcontrol queries a remote database of Debian binary and source package control files. It can be thought of as an apt-cache webservice that also operates for distributions and architectures different from the local machine.

Modifiers

Like apt-cache, packages can be suffixed by modifiers:

=version

Exact version match

@architecture

Query this only architecture. Use @source for source packages, @binary excludes source packages.

/[archive:][suite][/component]

Restrict to archive (debian, debian-backports, debian-security, debian-volatile), suite (always codenames, with the exception of experimental), and/or component (main, updates/main, ...). Use two slashes (//) to separate suite and component if the suite name contains slashes. (Component can be left empty.)

By default, all versions, suites, and architectures are queried. Refer to https://qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/dcontrol for currently supported values.

Options

-s, --show-suites

Add headers showing which distribution the control file is from.

-d, --debug

Print URL queried.

--noconf, --no-conf

Ignore all configuration files (must be the first option).

-h, --help

Show a help message.

-V, --version

Show version information.

Configuration variables

The two configuration files /etc/devscripts.conf and ~/.devscripts are sourced by a shell in that order to set configuration variables. Command line options can be used to override configuration file settings. Environment variable settings are ignored for this purpose. The currently recognised variable is:

DCONTROL_URL

URL to query. Default is https://qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/dcontrol.