A toolkit for packages

If you use a Debian-based system, you soon learn to install or remove packages with apt-get/dpkg. But, how do you access packages while they are on your system? One of Debian's answers to this question is Debian Goodies [1], a collection of scripts for administering .deb packages that is available on most Debian-based systems, including Linux Mint and Ubuntu.

The commands bundled in the Debian Goodies collection are small scripts, with such limited options and general purposes that none of them seem to deserve to be in a separate package. Over the past 14 years or so, each script has found its way into Debian Goodies, making it a collection of tools that ranges from small features for tracking broken packages or extracting copyright information to tools intended mainly for Debian developers fixing bugs in preparation for a release.

The scripts of Debian Goodies are not the only package-related tools on a Debian-based system. Except perhaps for their size, packages like apt-cache, apt-listbugs, apt-mirror, and a couple of dozen others could easily fit into the collection. However, the commands packaged under Debian Goodies have one overwhelming advantage – you only need to remember a single name to have access to a variety of tools.

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