apt-cache search doesn't find mtree

[Brian Candler]

Binary package hint: apt

$ apt-cache search mtree
hitchhiker - access locations using Bazaar transports
konqueror-plugin-domtreeviewer - Dom tree viewer plugin for konqueror
makefs - create a cd9660 or ffs file system image from a directory tree
$ apt-cache search freebsd-mtree
$

But there *is* an mtree in the "freebsd-buildutils" package:

$ dpkg-query -L freebsd-buildutils | grep mtree
/usr/lib/freebsd/mtree
/usr/bin/freebsd-mtree

Why can't apt-cache search find it?

[David Kalnischkies (donkult)]

APT can't find it as the long description only is:
> Description: Utilities for building FreeBSD sources
> This package contains the FreeBSD counterparts of some standard build
> utilities (make, yacc, lex ..)
> .
> They have some specific modifications needed to be able to build FreeBSD
> sources (such as kfreebsd-8).
(at least that is the description for debians version 8.1-1)

Nothing about mtree, so mtree can't be found.

Please ask the package maintainer to include whatever would be useful
in the description. A '..' (what should be a '...' or better '…') isn't useful
in this case as a program can't make the needed mental transformation…

Just in case:
$ apt-cache search yacc
and
$ apt-cache search yacc freebsd
have the expected results.

Best regards

David Kalnischkies

[Brian Candler (b-candler)]

Sorry, this is me being dense. I thought that apt-cache search knew about the list of files in each package; careful reading of the manpage shows it's only the package names and descriptions which are searched.

'command-not-found' doesn't find mtree either:

brian@x100:~$ mtree
No command 'mtree' found, did you mean:
 Command 'ytree' from package 'ytree' (universe)
 Command 'ptree' from package 'adacontrol' (universe)
 Command 'tree' from package 'tree' (universe)
 Command 'ttree' from package 'libtemplate-perl' (main)
mtree: command not found

(Actually it *does* know about freebsd-mtree, but only if you try that explicitly)

If there's a general way to locate a package which contains a file matching pattern /foo/, apt-cache isn't it. Sorry for the noise.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Thank you for your interest in Ubuntu. I believe the command you're looking for is apt-file. It indexes file paths so you can see what package something is in. Please report any other issues you may find.