NAME

       madison-lite — display versions of Debian packages in an archive

SYNOPSIS

       madison-lite    [--config-file    file]   [--mirror   directory]   [--nocache]   [--update]   [-S]   [-r]
                    [-a architecture[,...]] [-c component[,...]] [-s suite[,...]] package [...]

DESCRIPTION

       madison-lite inspects a local Debian package archive and displays the  versions  of  the  given  packages
       found  in  each  suite  (for  example, stable, testing, or unstable) in a brief but easily human-readable
       form.  It aims to be a drop-in replacement for the madison utility (since renamed to dak  ls),  from  the
       dak  archive  management  suite  that  runs  on the central Debian archive systems, but one which can run
       without access to the archive's SQL database.

       The following options are available:

       --config-file file
             Read configuration from file, and ignore the system configuration file (see “CONFIGURATION” below).

       --mirror directory
             Quick configuration: use directory as the top level of the Debian mirror.

       --nocache
             Normally,  parts  of  the  Packages  and   Sources   files   in   the   archive   are   cached   in
             ~/.madison-lite/cache for speed.  This option disables that behaviour.

       --update
             Force caches of Packages and Sources files to be updated.

       -S, --source-and-binary
             Interpret  package as a source package name, and display versions of any associated binary packages
             as well as of the source package.

       -r, --regex
             Interpret package as a Perl regular expression anchored at the start of  the  package  name  rather
             than  as  an  exact  name.   Make  sure  to  quote  any  shell metacharacters such as ‘*’ or ‘?’ if
             necessary.

       -a, --architecture architecture[,...]
             Display only entries for packages built for these architectures.  Separate  multiple  architectures
             with commas or spaces.

       -c, --component component[,...]
             Display only entries in the given components.  Separate multiple components with commas or spaces.

       -s, --suite suite[,...]
             Display only entries in the given suites.  Separate multiple suites with commas or spaces.

CONFIGURATION

       madison-lite  reads  configuration  information  from the file named by --config-file, or, if that is not
       supplied, from the first of ~/.madison-lite/config and /etc/madison-lite/config that exists.

       The following configuration directives are recognized:

       mirror directory
             Set the top-level directory of  the  local  Debian  mirror.   Relative  directories  in  the  suite
             directive are interpreted relative to this directory.  Defaults to the current directory.

       suite name directory [component [...]]
             Defines  the  suite name based at directory, containing the specified components (defaulting to all
             subdirectories of directory).  Output is displayed following the order of suite directives  in  the
             configuration  file.   If  no  suite  directives  are present, then every subdirectory of the dists
             directory under mirror is treated as a suite, with all of their subdirectories as components.

             The Debian archive is structured such that the subdirectories  of  each  suite  directory  identify
             components  (such  as  main).   Each  of  those  in  turn  has subdirectories for each architecture
             (binary-i386, and so on), each of which contains any or all of Packages, Packages.gz, Packages.bz2,
             and Packages.xz files listing binary packages; it also  has  a  subdirectory  called  source  which
             contains  any  or  all  of  Sources,  Sources.gz,  Sources.bz2, and Sources.xz files listing source
             packages.

       The configuration file may contain comment lines, which start with a ‘#’ character.

EXAMPLES

       Show versions of the coreutils package:

             $ madison-lite coreutils

       Show versions of all binary packages on powerpc produced by the glibc source package:

             $ madison-lite -S -a powerpc glibc

       Show versions of all packages in the unstable suite whose names begin with ‘man’:

             $ madison-lite -s unstable -r 'man.*'

       An example configuration file for a simple local mirror:

             mirror /mirror/debian
             suite unstable dists/unstable main
             suite unstable-non-US non-US/dists/unstable non-US/main

SEE ALSO

       dpkg-scanpackages(8), dpkg-scansources(8), apt-ftparchive(1)

AUTHORS

       madison-lite was written by Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>.  The interface mirrors  that  of  madison
       (since renamed to dak ls), written by James Troup.

Debian                                           August 1, 2007                                  MADISON-LITE(1)