How can I know what programs some apt-get package contains?
Here are a few options, these will list all the files installed by a package:
A. Listing all files included in a package
For installed packages
dpkg -L ncurses-term
For all packages, installed or not
apt-file -F list ncurses-term
The
-F
turns of pattern matching so that only packages whose exact name matches are returned. You may need to installapt-file
withsudo apt-get install apt-file
and then update its database withsudo apt-file update
.
B. Listing only executable files included in a package
For installed packages
Just install
dlocate
(sudo apt-get dlocate
) and run:dlocate -lsbin ncurses-term
As explained in
man dlocate
:-lsbin List full path/filenames of executable files (if any) in package
If you don't want to install additional packages, you can do this manually. Just collect the list of files and find any among them that have the executable bit set:
apt-file -F list ncurses-term | cut -d ' ' -f 2 | while read file; do [[ -x $file && -f $file ]] && echo "$file"; done
The little scriptlet above will print the path only (
cut -d ' ' -f 2
) and then pass it through awhile
loop that checks if the file is executable (-x $file
) and if it is a regular file, no directories or symlinks (-f $file
) and prints its name only if passes both tests.For all packages, installed or not
There is no way I know of to list only executables included in an uninstalled package. However, since most executables are installed to
bin
directories, you can get most of them by parsing the output:apt-file -F list ncurses-term | grep -Ew "bin|sbin"
The
-w
option matches entire words, so you don't get things installed in, for example,trashbin
or whatever.
NOTE: None of the above commands will produce any output for ncurses-term
but that is because this package installs no executable files. The commands work nevertheless, try with a different package.
You could use apt-file:
sudo apt-file update
apt-file list package_name
There's a possibility using your browser (therefore not requiring access to a APT-system). For example, to list the file contents of package "ncurses-term", just type
https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/all/ncurses-term/filelist
into your browser's address bar (replace "wheezy" as needed) for Debian or
http://packages.ubuntu.com/saucy/all/ncurses-term/filelist
for Ubuntu (replace "saucy" as needed).