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, and Packages.bz2 files listing binary packages; it also has a
           subdirectory called source which contains any or all of Sources, Sources.gz, and
           Sources.bz2 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.