apt-? how do I get the feature whatprovides?

[sdide]

Hi,

I need a file X11/xpm.h and I do not know which package provides it.
Is there a command, apt-get or apt-cache, with a certain option/switch, that provides this feature.

something like.

~$ apt-? -apropiateoption "whatprovides" X11/xpm.h
libxpmwhatever
~$

Regards.

[kornhead127]

I'm guessing you want the X11 pixmap library? If so...

sudo apt-get install libxpm4

[sdide]

Thanks.
That may be true. (actually I think I need libxpm-dev, but that is beside the point.)
But what i wanted was a tool, that could tell me this, like fedora has "yum whatprovides blablabla"

Does apt have a similar feature?

[kornhead127]

Damn, you know what I don't think it has a feature like that. May I ask why you would require a piece of source (xpm.h).

[sdide]

I needed xpm.h, because I wanted to compile bbbutton. But its a shame that I can't get apt to do this for me.
yum - which I usually consider inferior, has this nice feature.

oh well. Thanks anyways.

[eentonig]

sudo apt-get update apt-cache search <keyword>

Will let you search packages in the repositories. It searches the name and description of the available packages.

[sdide]

Yeah, I guess apt-cache search is the closest I'll get.
However it doesn't catch what files are provided by each package. Maybe its because the information provided in the package desciption - the one apt-cache search does regex search through - does not contain which files are provided with that package.

so
~$ apt-cache search ".*xpm.h"

returns nothing even though, the package libxpm-dev installs that file, and its actually located in
/usr/include/X11


however the command
~$ dpkg-query -S "*xpm.h"

returns
libxpm-dev: /usr/include/X11/xpm.h

Which is great, only - thats what it returns because I have the package already installed! If I remove the package it returns nothing, so it is no good.

What i needed was a feature that could return this result before I installed the package...

Solution install EVERY package, make a list of packages installed find out which one contained the file, and the remove all other packages again.
Which is ofcourse - retarded.

[kb00heda]

Hi,

This is not the solution to your query, but at least---I guess---it is an acceptable workaround:

Visit

http://packages.ubuntulinux.org

and use the "Search the contents of packages" option. The keyword could be "xpm.h", in which case a search among the Feisty packages would tell us that, e.g., "libxpm-dev" provides this file.

But I agree: This nice feature should really be available from the CL using apt/aptitude. (And probably it is... but we have still to figure it out!)

Best regards,
David

[milstead]

The functionality you were looking for is supplied by apt-file. To install:

sudo apt-get install apt-file

To use:

sudo apt-file update

sudo apt-file search <filename>

Enjoy,

Tim.