okay, before i do any proper coding on a cmdline utility, i thought we should work out the details of the cmdline interface. this is an initial draft of what i was thinking, comments requested :)
sean
NAME
dpkg-conffile - inspect status and conttents of conffiles
SYNOPSIS
dpkg-conffile is a program designed to inspect and report on
the status of conffiles provided by packages that have been
installed on the system. It can be used to inspect the status
on individual files, packages, or system wide.
USAGE
dpkg-conffile [options] <action> <args>
OPTIONS
--admindir dir
Change default administrative directory, which contains
many files that give information about status of
installed or uninstalled packages, etc. (Defaults to
/var/lib/dpkg)
-r, --recursive
Used in combination with some commands to activate
recursive behavior for matching conffile_paths.
ACTIONS
-o, --orig conffile_path
Output the package's original version of the conffile.
-d, --diff conffile_path
Show the delta between the package's original version of
the conffile and the currently installed conffile. The
return value is that of the underlying call to diff(1).
-l, --list packagename
List the conffiles that are shipped in packagename.
The conffiles do not have to exist in their installed
locations.
-s, --status conffile_path
Show the status of the single file at conffile_path. See
STATUS CODES for a description of the output format.
STATUS CODES
When run with --status one line is output for each file, in the
format CODE:CONTEXT:PATH, where PATH is the path of the queried file,
and CODE is one of the following:
O: (Original) File is in its original state.
D: (Deleted) File has been deleted.
M: (Modified) File has been modified.
U: (Unknown) No conffile database available for this file/package.
E: (Error) Not a conffile?
CONTEXT is additional information, if available, to complement the
CODE. At the time of writing it is not used but left for future
expansion.
RETURN CODE
For all modes but -d/--diff, the command returns 0 on success and
nonzero on error. When diffing a file
EXAMPLES
Get list of all changed conffiles on system under /etc/apache2:
dpkg-conffile -r --status /etc/apache2
Get list of all conffiles provided by the apt package:
dpkg-conffile -l apt
Output the original (packaged) version of /etc/wgetrc:
dpkg-conffile -o /etc/wgetrc
Show a diff of the local changes made to /etc/wgetrc:
dpkg-conffile -d /etc/wgetrc
Show a diff of all conffiles:
dpkg-conffile -r -d /etc
SEE ALSO
dpkg(1), diff(1)
--
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
