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Zach Boyd
Asked: 2018-11-14 08:03:31 +0800 CST

How to find out what is in an Ubuntu package [duplicate]

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When viewing a package on the Ubuntu repositories (e.g. launchpad), there is usually only a sentence or two describing the package contents. Is there a place online to see more detail about package contents? Often, downloading a separate docs package is the only way I can get any more info.

Responding to a comment (and other posted answers): I would like something different from listing the file names, since my question is about understanding the technical functionality provided by various packages, for example, what versions of various standards the package implements or where to find the corresponding documentation.

package-management apt documentation

2 Answers

  1. Install the apt-file package:

    sudo apt-get install apt-file

    Update its database:

    apt-file update

    Now you may use the following to list the contents of a package:

    apt-file list <pkgname>

    Other commands, like:

    apt-file search <filename>

    will inform you of what package(s) contain the filename file.

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  2. If the package is listed in one of the official Ubuntu repositories, you can search for it on https://packages.ubuntu.com/. For example, searching for aptitude will get you this page:

    https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/aptitude

    Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "list of files" for the appropriate architecture (probably amd64 or all). This will give you a list of the files contained by the package, e.g.

    https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/amd64/aptitude/filelist

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