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I want to see the version of a package before I install it. How can I do this?

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3 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

Packages known by your system / offline

You can use apt-cache to query the APT cache. To show the versions known by your system use apt-cache policy. Example:

apt-cache policy iceweasel  
iceweasel:                        
  Installed: 10.0.4esr-3
  Candidate: 10.0.4esr-3
  Version table:
     12.0-7 0
          1 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ experimental/main amd64 Packages
 *** 10.0.4esr-3 0
        500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     10.0.4esr-2 0
        500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing/main amd64 Packages

This means iceweasel version 12.0-7 is available in experimental and has priority 1, version 10.0.4esr-3 is installed from sid and has priority 500 and 10.0.4esr-2 is in testing.

For a detailed description about the meaning of priorities have a look at apt_preferences(5)

You can also display a brief description and some meta information about the package with

apt-cache show package-name

Information about all debian packages / online

If you want to get version information about all available debian packages (basically what http://packages.debian.org does) you can use rmadison(1) to remotely query the database. rmadison is in the devscripts package which you have to install via apt-get install devscripts.

$ rmadison iceweasel
 iceweasel | 3.0.6-3             | lenny-security    | source, alpha, amd64, arm, armel, hppa, i386, ia64, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc
 iceweasel | 3.0.6-3             | lenny             | source, alpha, amd64, arm, armel, hppa, i386, ia64, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc
 iceweasel | 3.5.16-11~bpo50+1   | backports/lenny   | source, alpha, amd64, armel, i386, ia64, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc
 iceweasel | 3.5.16-14           | squeeze           | source, amd64, armel, i386, ia64, kfreebsd-amd64, kfreebsd-i386, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc
 iceweasel | 3.5.16-15           | squeeze-p-u       | source, amd64, armel, i386, ia64, kfreebsd-amd64, kfreebsd-i386, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc
 iceweasel | 3.5.16-15           | squeeze-security  | source, amd64, armel, i386, ia64, kfreebsd-amd64, kfreebsd-i386, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc
 iceweasel | 10.0.4esr-2~bpo60+1 | squeeze-backports | source, amd64, i386, kfreebsd-amd64, kfreebsd-i386, s390
 iceweasel | 10.0.4esr-2         | wheezy            | source, amd64, armel, armhf, i386, ia64, kfreebsd-amd64, kfreebsd-i386, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, s390x, sparc
 iceweasel | 10.0.4esr-3         | sid               | source, amd64, armel, armhf, hurd-i386, i386, ia64, kfreebsd-amd64, kfreebsd-i386, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, s390x, sparc
 iceweasel | 11.0-4              | experimental      | source, armel
 iceweasel | 12.0-3              | experimental      | source, mips
 iceweasel | 12.0-7              | experimental      | source, amd64, armhf, hurd-i386, i386, ia64, kfreebsd-amd64, kfreebsd-i386, powerpc, s390, s390x, sparc

The difference between apt-cache and rmadison is that apt-cache shows only the information known to your system (but can be used offline) while rmadison shows all version of available packages

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Why you choice apt-cache policy for see package information? What is the cause of you choice apt-cache instead of aptitude? – mesuutt May 24 '12 at 13:20
@mesuutt aptitude show shows only one version/the version installed. But as i have multiple repositories in my sources.list (testing, unstable, experimental) i want to know which version is available in which package. You can also have a look at apt-cache show which is basically like aptitude show but will show the information for multiple versions. – Ulrich Dangel May 24 '12 at 13:24
Thanks @UlrichDangel.I did not work with multiple package version and repository more.Now I think that apt-cache policy is more useful if you work with multiple repository :) – mesuutt May 24 '12 at 13:47
@UlrichDangel aptitude can show versions for multiple repositories since squeeze. – rush May 24 '12 at 13:57
@mesuutt rush is right you can see multiple versions either via aptitude show -v $PACKAGE or the answer he posted – Ulrich Dangel May 24 '12 at 14:06
up vote 3 down vote

aptitude since squeeze has ability to show all available versions. This is very useful in case you have repositories for different releases:

 $ aptitude versions aptitude
i   0.6.3-3.2+squeeze1        stable               700
p   0.6.7-1                   testing,unstable     650
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Ah this looks great. There is just some small/minor gripe i discovered. aptitude versions seems to treat the package name as a pattern, this means something like aptitude versions gcc list many other packets besides the gcc package. – Ulrich Dangel May 24 '12 at 14:09
Hm, that's strange. At my side aptitude versions doesn't treat name as pattern and aptitude versions gcc show versions only for gcc package and it shows nothing about gcc-4.1 and others. May be it is as you describe in testing or even sid, unfortunately I don't have access to such versions right now to confirm that. – rush May 24 '12 at 14:16
up vote 2 down vote

Lots of package information is found at http://packages.debian.org/package-name, e.g. http://packages.debian.org/iceweasel.

But aptitude can help, too, try

aptitude show package-name
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Thanks.This is good ;) – mesuutt May 24 '12 at 12:56

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