Package List and Description

[Aaron Gaudio]

On Wed, 2004-08-18 at 11:27 -0400, Thom Paine wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-08-18 at 10:18, Aaron Gaudio wrote:
> 
> > 
> > If you want to know what a particular package you have installed does,
> > you can use 'rpm -qi [packagename]' to get a summary. Beyond that,
> > documentation is usually in /usr/share/doc/[packagename]-[version].
> > 
> > RH used to also have a file that included the package db for all the
> > packages that came on the CDs. Then, you could point rpm to that db
> > instead of the default when you did you query: 'rpm --dbpath ...'. I
> > don't know if Fedora still has that. 
> > 
> > As for me, if I want information on a package I don't have installed, I
> > usually use synaptic to see it, since I'm an avid apt user. Yum/up2date
> > may have a similar way to do this.
> > 
> Does that still work if the package isn't installed?

Since synaptic downloads a db containing headers for the packages, it
will show you the summary of packages that are not yet installed. It
also knows about the various dependencies, which is how it figures out
what other packages need to be installed when you try to install one.

> 
> I was thinking of the summary that flashes by when you are installing
> Fedora. Is that the same one?

Yes, that is showing the summary of the package as found in an 'rpm -qi'
query.