dpkg-query --show "git"
dpkg-query -f '${Version}' --show git

dpkg-query [option...] command

-l, –list [package-name-pattern…]

List packages matching given pattern. If no package-name-pattern is given, list all packages in /var/lib/dpkg/status, excluding

the ones marked as not-installed (i.e. those which have been previously purged). Normal shell wildcard characters are allowed

in package-name-pattern. Please note you will probably have to quote package-name-pattern to prevent the shell from performing

filename expansion. For example this will list all package names starting with “libc6”:

dpkg-query -l ‘libc6*’

The first three columns of the output show the desired action, the package status, and errors, in that order.

Desired action:

u = Unknown

i = Install

h = Hold

r = Remove

p = Purge

Package status:

n = Not-installed

c = Config-files

H = Half-installed

U = Unpacked

F = Half-configured

W = Triggers-awaiting

t = Triggers-pending

i = Installed

Error flags:

<empty> = (none)

R = Reinst-required

An uppercase status or error letter indicates the package is likely to cause severe problems. Please refer to dpkg(1) for

information about the above states and flags.

The output format of this option is not configurable, but varies automatically to fit the terminal width. It is intended for

human readers, and is not easily machine-readable. See -W (–show) and –showformat for a way to configure the output format.

-W, –show [package-name-pattern…]

Just like the –list option this will list all packages matching the given pattern. However the output can be customized using

the –showformat option. The default output format gives one line per matching package, each line having the name (extended

with the architecture qualifier for Multi-Arch same packages) and installed version of the package, separated by a tab.

-s, –status package-name…

Report status of specified package. This just displays the entry in the installed package status database. When multiple

package-name are listed, the requested status entries are separated by an empty line, with the same order as specified on the

argument list.

–control-list package-name

List control files installed to your system from package-name (since dpkg 1.16.5). These can be used as input arguments to

–control-show.

–control-show package-name control-file

Print the control-file installed to your system from package-name to the standard output (since dpkg 1.16.5).

-c, –control-path package-name [control-file]

List paths for control files installed to your system from package-name (since dpkg 1.15.4). If control-file is specified then

only list the path for that control file if it is present.

Warning: this command is deprecated as it gives direct access to the internal dpkg database, please switch to use

–control-list and –control-show instead for all cases where those commands might give the same end result. Although, as long

as there is still at least one case where this command is needed (i.e. when having to remove a damaging postrm maintainer

script), and while there is no good solution for that, this command will not get removed.

-S, –search filename-search-pattern…

Search for packages that own files corresponding to the given pattern. Standard shell wildcard characters can be used in the

pattern, where asterisk (*) and question mark (?) will match a slash, and blackslash (\) will be used as an escape character.

If the first character in the filename-search-pattern is none of ‘*[?/’ then it will be considered a substring match and will

be implicitly surrounded by ‘*’ (as in *filename-search-pattern*). If the subsequent string contains any of ‘*[?\’, then it

will handled like a glob pattern, otherwise any trailing ‘/’ or ‘/.’ will be removed and a literal path lookup will be

performed.

This command will not list extra files created by maintainer scripts, nor will it list alternatives.

-p, –print-avail package-name…

Display details about package-name, as found in /var/lib/dpkg/available. When multiple package-name are listed, the requested

available entries are separated by an empty line, with the same order as specified on the argument list.

Users of APT-based frontends should use apt-cache show package-name instead as the available file is only kept up-to-date when

using dselect.

–admindir=dir

Change the location of the dpkg database. The default location is /var/lib/dpkg.

–load-avail

Also load the available file when using the –show and –list commands, which now default to only querying the status file

(since dpkg 1.16.2).

-f, –showformat=format

This option is used to specify the format of the output –show will produce. The format is a string that will be output for

each package listed.

In the format string, “\” introduces escapes:

\n newline

\r carriage return

\t tab

“\” before any other character suppresses any special meaning of the following character, which is useful for “\” and “$”.

Package information can be included by inserting variable references to package fields using the syntax “${field[;width]}”.

Fields are printed right-aligned unless the width is negative in which case left alignment will be used. The following fields

are recognized but they are not necessarily available in the status file (only internal fields or fields stored in the binary

package end up in it):

Architecture

Bugs

Conffiles (internal)

Config-Version (internal)

Conflicts

Breaks

Depends

Description

Enhances

Essential

Filename (internal, front-end related)

Homepage

Installed-Size

MD5sum (internal, front-end related)

MSDOS-Filename (internal, front-end related)

Maintainer

Origin

Package

Pre-Depends

Priority

Provides

Recommends

Replaces

Revision (obsolete)

Section

Size (internal, front-end related)

Source

Status (internal)

Suggests

Tag (usually not in .deb but in repository Packages files)

Triggers-Awaited (internal)

Triggers-Pending (internal)

Version

The following are virtual fields, generated by dpkg-query from values from other fields (note that these do not use valid names

for fields in control files):

binary:Package

It contains the binary package name with a possible architecture qualifier like “libc6:amd64” (since dpkg 1.16.2). An

architecture qualifier will be present to make the package name unambiguous, for example if the package has a Multi-Arch

field with a value of same or the package is of a foreign architecture.

binary:Summary

It contains the package short description (since dpkg 1.16.2).

db:Status-Abbrev

It contains the abbreviated package status (as three characters), such as “ii ” or “iHR” (since dpkg 1.16.2). See the

–list command description for more details.

db:Status-Want

It contains the package wanted status, part of the Status field (since dpkg 1.17.11).

db:Status-Status

It contains the package status word, part of the Status field (since dpkg 1.17.11).

db:Status-Eflag

It contains the package status error flag, part of the Status field (since dpkg 1.17.11).

source:Package

It contains the source package name for this binary package (since dpkg 1.16.2).

source:Version

It contains the source package version for this binary package (since dpkg 1.16.2)

source:Upstream-Version

It contains the source package upstream version for this binary package (since dpkg 1.18.16)

The default format string is “${binary:Package}\t${Version}\n”. Actually, all other fields found in the status file (i.e. user

defined fields) can be requested, too. They will be printed as-is, though, no conversion nor error checking is done on them. To

get the name of the dpkg maintainer and the installed version, you could run:

dpkg-query -W -f=’${binary:Package} ${Version}\t${Maintainer}\n’ dpkg

0 The requested query was successfully performed.

1 The requested query failed either fully or partially, due to no file or package being found (except for –control-path,

–control-list and –control-show were such errors are fatal).

2 Fatal or unrecoverable error due to invalid command-line usage, or interactions with the system, such as accesses to the

database, memory allocations, etc.