I use the dpkg -l
command to find out what version of a package I have installed. For example:
dpkg -l network-manager
returns the information on the package:
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-=========================-=========================-==================================================================
ii network-manager 0.8.3~git.20101118t223039 network management framework daemon
As you can see, it returns 0.8.3~git.20101118t223039
which is wrong because it truncates the version (I've picked a long one for the purpose of this question). The way I've solved this in the past is to pass a stupidly long COLUMNS argument to make it expand:
COLUMNS=200 dpkg -l network-manager
which gives me the entire version number, but also a bunch of junk:
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-============================================-============================================-========================================================================================================
ii network-manager 0.8.3~git.20101118t223039.d60a988-0ubuntu1 network management framework daemon
Now I can see the full version number, which is 0.8.3~git.20101118t223039.d60a988-0ubuntu1
.
I get the feeling that this is not the proper way to find the version number of an installed package. This never really was a problem in the past, but with the tacking on of "ubuntu" in the versions and the proliferation of PPAs these strings are getting longer and longer. Is there an easier way?