How to find the list of all available packages along with the lastest version number available in the repositories?

Question

I want to list all the packages(installed or not installed) along with the latest version number available in the repositories.

For example:

The output of apt-cache policy chromium-browser shows like below

$ apt-cache policy chromium-browser
chromium-browser:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 34.0.1847.116-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
     34.0.1847.116-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://ftp.cuhk.edu.hk/pub/Linux/ubuntu/ trusty/universe amd64 Packages

So the latest version of chromium-browser package available in the repository is 34.0.1847.116-0ubuntu2. Like that, i want to list the version number along with the package names that are available in repositories. And all i want to do this through command-line.

I want the output to be like this,

chromium-browser 34.0.1847.116-0ubuntu2
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx   yyyyyyyyyyy
............     ............

Answer 1

apt-cache policy '.*' displays detailed version information for all packages.

If you want a more compact output with one line per package, you can use aptitude. The following command lists available versions (see the manual for output format specifications) for all packages except cross-architecture ones (e.g. 32-bit packages on a 64-bit system) (see the manual for search patterns):

aptitude search -F '%54p %24V' '~rnative'

Answer 2

apt-cache dump

N.B.: This is a very large output. You will want to use a pager like less, or redirect this output to a file.

Answer 3

The below command will list all the available packages along with their latest version numbers available in repositories.

for i in $(apt-cache search all | awk -F' - ' '{print $1}'); do apt-cache policy $i | sed -n '1,3p' | sed ':a;N;s/\n//g;ba'; done | awk '{print $1,$5}'

Example:

$ for i in $(apt-cache search all | awk -F' - ' '{print $1}'); do apt-cache policy $i | sed -n '1,3p' | sed ':a;N;s/\n//g;ba'; done | awk '{print $1,$5}'
acpica-tools: 20140214-1ubuntu1
acpid: 1:2.0.21-1ubuntu2
activity-log-manager: 0.9.7-0ubuntu14
adduser: 3.113+nmu3ubuntu3
advancecomp: 1.18-1
aide: 0.16~a2.git20130520-2
aide-common: 0.16~a2.git20130520-2
alembic: 0.6.2+ds-1
alien: 8.90
alsa-base: 1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu4
amavisd-new: 1:2.7.1-2ubuntu3
anacron: 2.3-20ubuntu1
android-headers: 4.2.2-2-0ubuntu1
android-tools-fsutils: 4.2.2+git20130218-3ubuntu23
antlr: 2.7.7+dfsg-5
apache2: 2.4.7-1ubuntu4
apache2-bin: 2.4.7-1ubuntu4
apache2-dev: 2.4.7-1ubuntu4
apache2-mpm-event: 2.4.7-1ubuntu4
apache2-mpm-prefork: 2.4.7-1ubuntu4
apache2-mpm-worker: 2.4.7-1ubuntu4
apache2-utils: 2.4.7-1ubuntu4
apache2.2-bin: 2.4.7-1ubuntu4
apg: 2.2.3.dfsg.1-2ubuntu1
^C

I take the first package and then do apt-cache policy on that, it displays the same version number as displayed by the above for command,

$ apt-cache policy acpica-tools
acpica-tools:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 20140214-1ubuntu1
  Version table:
     20140214-1ubuntu1 0
        500 http://ftp.cuhk.edu.hk/pub/Linux/ubuntu/ trusty/main amd64 Packages

Answer 4

This seems to accomplish what you're asking.

gawk '/^Package:/{printf $2 "\t"} /^Version:/{print $2}' /var/lib/dpkg/available

It should be somewhat faster than parsing the output of another command too. If you want to mess with the formatting (for package: version — note that's not what your question asks for), you can change the first printf to:

printf $2 ": "