grep-aptavail
and friends (grep-dctrl
and grep-available
, to find this information respectively in specific Packages files or in the dkpg
base of locally installed packages) are the most precise tools for that:
grep-aptavail -s Description -PX packagename
Example:
$ grep-aptavail -PX 'apache2' -s Description
Description: Apache HTTP Server metapackage
The Apache Software Foundation's goal is to build a secure, efficient and
extensible HTTP server as standards-compliant open source software. The
result has long been the number one web server on the Internet.
.
It features support for HTTPS, virtual hosting, CGI, SSI, IPv6, easy
scripting and database integration, request/response filtering, many
flexible authentication schemes, and more.*
Note:
Debian (and Ubuntu) packages have two parts in their description:
- the first line of the Description field is the short description, which appears in
apt-cache search packagename
;
- the rest of the Description field (beginning with the second line) is the long description.
For this reason, you can get the short description as a one-liner, but the long description is by definition spread on several lines.