Help - Debian Package Search
Author: Benjamin Mesing
Keywords: Package, Debtags, Apt, Search

## Debian Package Search Help Page

This tool is aimed to help you searching the packages you need. It should make the task of searching a pleasant experience. Originally I designed it for the purpose of finding a single package where you have a clear imagination of what you want. But you can also use it to simply browse your packages to explore. Perhaps there is something in the database that you simply must have :-).
The program is not meant to be a package managment tool like synaptic. This is far beyond its purpose. It is not able to install a single package, but if you have found the one you where searching for, you can simply type "apt-get install packagename" and install it.

The program consists of the main dialog only. The main window is split into two parts:

1. The upper part where you can enter the search you want to perform.
2. The lower part which shows the results of your current search.

### A More Detailed View on the Search

In the upper pane you can enter the search criterias you want to perform.

There are three main criterias you can use for searching:

Search by Categories (Debtags Search) | The debtags search is based on the debtags system developed by Enrico Zini. The main idea behind it is, that every package is characterized by a number of categories called tags. Each package is given a number of such tags. E.g. the image editor gimp is tagged by `junior, media, media::rasterimage, suite, uitoolkit, uitoolkit::gtk`. You can select the tags you want to search for on the right side under the page Debtags. If you want to exclude some tags, check the Exclude Tags box, and a second list will appear. Here you can select the tags you do not want to have on the package. The tags are organized in a hierarchy, where each tag is inside a so called "facet". As tagging is still under development, not all tags are inside facets yet, but this will change in time. The tags you selected will be showen on the left side were you can easily remove them again.
Search Related Packages (Related Search) | You can search for packages related to another package using the related search. You can select this on the right side under the page Related. Here you can enter a package name. The search will find all packages which have similar tags as the given one. The packages may only differ in the number of "Maximum Distance" tags from the one you entered. Or more formal: |(A union B) difference (A intersect B)| <= MaxDistance
Search by Pattern (Apt Search) | You can enter a pattern to search the package names and descriptions for on the left side below the Search pattern text. The names of all packages available will be searched for the expression you enter there. If the "Search Descriptions" box is checked, the descriptions will be included in the full text search. Note: Currently the use of regular expressions is not supported.

Additionally you can select to search the installed or not installed packages only.

### The Result View

The bottom pane shows the results of your current serach. The result contains all packages matching all the searches you have specified, i.e. debtags search as well as related search as well as apt search. It shows the results in realtime, i.e. every change you perform in the search will be evaluated immidiately (except if you type a text, where it delays the evaluation a little to see if you will type another character). The packages are shown with a short description in the list on the left. If you click an item a full description will be shown in right pane. There you can also choose to see some details like: dependencies, author,...
You can right-click on a package (request a context menu) in a result and choose to generate a apt-get line for it. This creates a line `apt-get install packagename` and copies the content to your clipboard. Note that this is not the clipboard available via the middle mouse button but the other clipboard often accesable via "Ctrl+C".
In the details view can browse the dependencies by clicking the underlined packages.

### Additional Features

You can perform a debtags update via the GUI. This updates your tag database. This is where the information about the tags that are assigned to each package is stored. For accessing this functionality choose System->Debtags Update from the menu.

If you have further questions please contact me at bensmail@gmx.net

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Date: 2004-07-13