NAME
debtags - Command line interface to access and manipulate Debian
Package Tags
SYNOPSIS
debtags [options] <command> [options and arguments]
DESCRIPTION
debtags manages package tag data in a debian system and performs basic
queries on it.
Package data are activated or updated in the system using the debtags
update command; that must be run by root. Tag data are pulled from a
variety of sources listed in /etc/debtags/sources.list and merged
together.
Recently, a basic version of the tag data is also present in the APT
database. It is a very useful resource for applications that are not
using debtags-specific functions (such as apt-cache or grep-dctrl), but
it does not support local changes or merging from different sources.
debtags itself can also be used to perform basic queries on the Debtags
system: the vocabulary can be queried with the tagshow and tagsearch
commands; a package tag database can be checked against the vocabulary
with the check command; packages related to a given one (or group) can
be shown with the related command; the whole collection can be copied
to standard output to be processed with tagcoll or other tools by the
cat command; packages can be searched by tags using the grep command.
COMMANDS
debtags accepts a non-switch argument, that indicates what is the
operation that should be performed:
help [command]
With no arguments, print a summary of available commands. If
given a command name as argument, print detailed informations
about that command.
update
Collect package tag data from the sources listed in
/etc/debtags/sources.list, then regenerate the debtags tag
database and main index.
It needs to be run as root
selfcheck
perform a series of internal self checks using the current tag
data
check <file>
check that all the tags in the given tagged collection are
present in the tag vocabulary. Checks the main database if no
file is specified
tagcat
output the tag vocabulary
tagshow
show the vocabulary informations about a tag
tagsearch <string [string [string ...]]>
show a summary of all tags whose data contains the given strings
show <pkg>
show informations about a package, like apt-cache show does, but
adding the tag informations from the debtags index
related <pkg1[,pkg2[,pkg3...]]>
Output a list of the packages that are related to the given
package or list of packages. If more than one package are to be
specified, separate them with commas.
The --distance option can be used to control how closely related
the output packages should be from the package(s) specified.
cat
output the full package tag database
dumpavail [tag expression]
output the full package database
search <tag expression>
output the names and descriptions of the packages that match the
given tag expression
grep <tag expression>
output the lines of the full package tag database that match the
given tag expression
install <tag expression>
Invokes apt-get install with the names of the packages matched
by the given tag expression. If you want to see what packages
would be installed you can use debtags search, as debtags
install just calls apt-get install on all the results of an
equivalent debtags search. Please note that debtags install is
just a prototype feature useful for experimenting in some
environments like Custom Debian Distributions. For this reason
it is suggested that you use debtags just as a way to find
packages, and proper package managers as the way to install them
diff or mkpatch [filename]
create a tag patch between the current tag database and the tag
collection [filename]. Standard input is used if filename is
not specified
maintainers
create a tagged collection of maintainers and the tags of the
packages they maintain
tag {add|rm|ls} <package> [tags...]
General manipulation of tags, useful for automation in scripts.
It can be used in three ways:
tag add <package> <tags...> will add the tags to the given
package
tag rm <package> <tags...> will remove the tags from the given
package
tag ls <package> will output the names of the tags of the given
package
submit [patch]
mail the given patch file to the central tag repository.If
[patch] is omitted, mail the local tag modifications.
todo
print a list of the installed packages that are not yet tagged
score
score uninstalled packages according to how often their tags
appear in the packages that are installed already
stats
print statistics about Debtags
smartsearch <word [word1 [+tag [-tag1 ...]]]>
Perform a keyword search integrated with related packages.
A + prefix indicates a wanted tag. A - prefix indicates an
unwanted tag. Other words indicate keywords to search.
Remember to use '--' before unwanted tags to avoid having them
interpreted as command line switches.
vocfilter tagfile
filter out the tags that are not found in the given vocabulary
file
OPTIONS
This program follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long
options starting with two dashes (`-').
Every one of the commands listed above has its own set of options. To
keep this manpage readable, all the options are presented together.
Please refer to "debtags help command" to see which options are
accepted by a given command.
Help options:
-h, -?, --help
print commandline help and exit.
--version
print the program version and exit.
--manpage=[hooks]
output the debtags manpage and exit.
Other options:
-v, --verbose
enable verbose output.
--debug
enable debugging output (including verbose output). Options for
command help
Options for command update
Other options:
--local
do not download files when performing an update.
--reindex
do not download any file, just do reindexing if needed. Options
for command selfcheck
Options for command check
Options for command tagcat
Options for command tagshow
Options for command tagsearch
Options for command show
Options for command related
Other options:
-d distance, --distance=distance
set the maximum distance to use for the "related" command
(defaults to 0). Options for command cat
Options controlling matching of packages:
-i, --invert
invert the match, selecting non-matching items.
Options controlling transformations of tag data on output:
--names
output only the names of the packages.
-q, --quiet
do not write anything to standard output.
--facets
output only the names of the facets (mainly used for computing
statistics).
Options for command dumpavail
Options controlling matching of packages:
-i, --invert
invert the match, selecting non-matching items.
Options controlling transformations of package data on output:
--names
output only the names of the packages.
-q, --quiet
do not write anything to standard output.
--short
output the names of the packages, plus a short description.
--full output the full record of package data.
Options for command search
Options controlling matching of packages:
-i, --invert
invert the match, selecting non-matching items.
Options controlling transformations of package data on output:
--names
output only the names of the packages.
-q, --quiet
do not write anything to standard output.
--short
output the names of the packages, plus a short description.
--full output the full record of package data.
Options for command grep
Options controlling matching of packages:
-i, --invert
invert the match, selecting non-matching items.
Options controlling transformations of tag data on output:
--names
output only the names of the packages.
-q, --quiet
do not write anything to standard output.
--facets
output only the names of the facets (mainly used for computing
statistics).
Options for command install
Options controlling matching of packages:
-i, --invert
invert the match, selecting non-matching items.
Options for command diff
Options for command maintainers
Options controlling transformations of tag data on output:
--names
output only the names of the packages.
-q, --quiet
do not write anything to standard output.
--facets
output only the names of the facets (mainly used for computing
statistics).
Options for command tag
Options for command submit
Options for command todo
Options controlling transformations of package data on output:
--names
output only the names of the packages.
-q, --quiet
do not write anything to standard output.
--short
output the names of the packages, plus a short description.
--full output the full record of package data.
Options for command score
Options for command stats
Options for command smartsearch
Other options:
--relevant
only print the tag names sorted by increasing relevance.
--discriminant
only print the tag names sorted by increasing discriminance.
Options for command vocfilter
Other options:
--vocabulary=file
vocabulary file to use instead of the current debtags
vocabulary.
EXAMPLES
Here are some example invocations of debtags:
# Update the package tag database
debtags update
# Show apt-cache informations about the mutt package,
# adding tag informations
debtags show mutt
# Show packages related to mutt
# (adjust the distance as needed)
debtags related -d 7 mutt
# Show packages related to galeon and mozilla-browser
# (adjust the distance as needed)
debtags related -d 5 galeon,mozilla-browser
# Search the tag vocabulary for mail-related tags
debtags tagsearch mail
# Output a list of all packages which can edit raster images, excluding
# shared libraries and dummy packages
debtags search "use::editing && media::rasterimage && \
! (role::aux-shlib || role::aux-dummy)"
# Show all mail clients
debtags search 'works-with::mail && role::sw:client'
# Output the collection of all mail clients, ready to be reprocessed via
# tagcoll
debtags grep 'works-with::mail && role::sw:client'
# Produce an easily navigable hierarchy with the collection data
debtags cat | tagcoll hierarchy
# Produce a local tag patch
debtags cat > work-tags
...edit work-tags...
debtags mkpatch work-tags > my-tagpatch
# Produce a local tag patch with tagcolledit
debtags cat > orig-tags
debtags cat > work-tags
tagcolledit work-tags
tagcoll diff orig-tags work-tags > my-tagpatch
# Submit the patch
debtags submit my-tagpatch
# Install all IRC clients
debtags install 'protocol::irc && role::sw:client'
# Look for friends ;)
# (adjust the distance as needed)
debtags maintainers | tagcoll related -d 12 'Enrico Zini <enrico@debian.org>'
FILES
/var/lib/debtags/vocabulary
The normative tag vocabulary
/etc/debtags/sources.list
The list of sources to build the package tags database from
/var/lib/debtags/package-tags
The system package tags database, only kept as an easily
parsable reference. In the same directory there is a the binary
index with the same content, used by applications for fast
access.
SEE ALSO
debtags-edit(1), tagcoll(1), tagcolledit(1), apt-cache(1),
http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/
http://debian.vitavonni.de/packagebrowser/
AUTHOR
debtags is maintained by enrico@enricozini.org.
This manpage has been automatically generated by the debtags program.