Binary package hint: command-not-found
If a command is already installed by some package, there's no way to search command-not-found's database (short of some sort of PATH hack). Searching the database would be a handy way to find out what package provides that command, along with what other packages provide identically-named commands. It's also possible to do some of that using dpkg -S, but that only works if the command *is* installed by some package, and it uses a different database, and it doesn't list other packages that provide identically-named commands, and it's slow.
The attached patch adds a new command "packages-providing" that prints a two-column list listing package names and components that provide the named command -- e.g.:
$ packages-providing alien
alien main
The patch also changes one line of code to not crash on x86_64 architecture.
This isn't yet properly tested, since I found the database building code seems broken: is that a known issue? I tested as far as hacking the code a bit to get myself a tiny database, building and installing the package, and seeing that "packages-providing alien" printed what I expected. Can I get a pre-built database that's compatible with bzr command-not-found from somewhere?
Patch is against bzr revision 71.
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10
Codename: karmic
Thanks for your bugreport and your patch.
It is possible (also currently pretty difficult) to search the c-n-f database for installed packages. Here is a example:
$ /usr/lib/
The program 'alien' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install alien
alien: command not found
Having a simpler way is probably a good idea. If you are interessted on working on this I would suggest to start
with the lp:~ubuntu-core-dev/command-not-found/ubuntu branch as the 0.3 branch is currently not planned to
land for lucid. I would also suggest to use a slightly less generic name like "packages-
For quickest turn-around for patches, its probably best to use irc (I'm "mvo" on freenode) or mail me patches
directly :)
Cheers,
Michael