As the manpage says, what-source
is a simple wrapper for apt-cache show | grep
. The actual code is:
#!/bin/sh
# [....]
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
apt-cache show "$1" | grep "^Filename:" | sed -e "s:\(.*\)/\(.*\)/\(.*\)/\(.*\)/.*:\4:"
apt-cache show
will show the description for each version of the software available in the repositories. For example:
$ apt-cache policy firefox
firefox:
Installed: 38.0+build3-0ubuntu0.14.04.1
Candidate: 38.0+build3-0ubuntu0.14.04.1
Version table:
*** 38.0+build3-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 0
500 http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/ubuntu/ trusty-security/main amd64 Packages
500 http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/ubuntu/ trusty-updates/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
28.0+build2-0ubuntu2 0
500 http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/ubuntu/ trusty/main amd64 Packages
There are two versions available in three repositories, and apt-cache
will show descriptions of these two versions:
$ apt-cache show firefox | grep -i -e version -e filename
Version: 38.0+build3-0ubuntu0.14.04.1
Filename: pool/main/f/firefox/firefox_38.0+build3-0ubuntu0.14.04.1_amd64.deb
Version: 28.0+build2-0ubuntu2
Filename: pool/main/f/firefox/firefox_28.0+build2-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb
So, yes, the behaviour is perfectly normal.