RMADISON(1)

📦
version 2.26.11ubuntu1 · 15 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 RMADISON 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to rmadison — that's the manual page, and yes it's RMADISON(1) in the system, but we're on a first-name basis here 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

rmadison — remotely queries the Debian archive database about packages. that's it. that's the whole vibe. 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

rmadison [OPTIONS] PACKAGE ...

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so dak ls queries the Debian archive database (affectionately known as "projectb") and shows you which package version is registered per architecture/component/suite. slay.

the CGI at https://qa.debian.org/madison.php gives you that same service without needing SSH access to ftp-master.debian.org or the mirror on mirror.ftp-master.debian.org. iconic honestly. and this script, rmadison, is just a command line frontend to that CGI. it's giving convenient. ✨

now, plot twist 🌈 — Ubuntu has no such CGI. so if you're querying an https://api.launchpad.net/ URL, like the ubuntu shorthand does, that question gets answered by asking the Launchpad web service for the published sources and binaries, and then formatting the reply like madison would. iykyk. check out "LAUNCHPAD ARCHIVES" down below for the tea. 🍓

👑 OPTIONS 👑

  • -a, --architecture=ARCH — only show info for ARCH(s)
  • -b, --binary-type=TYPE — only show info for binary TYPE
  • -c, --component=COMPONENT — only show info for COMPONENT(s)
  • -g, --greaterorequal — show buildd 'dep-wait pkg >= {highest version}' info
  • -G, --greaterthan — show buildd 'dep-wait pkg >> {highest version}' info
  • -h, --help — show this help and exit
  • -s, --suite=SUITE — only show info for this suite
  • -r, --regex — treat PACKAGE as a regex
⚠️ bestie listen to me for a sec — since -r can easily DoS the database ("-r .", i mean 💀), this option is not supported by the CGI on qa.debian.org and most other installations. do not. okay love u.
  • -S, --source-and-binary — show info for the binary children of source pkgs
  • -t, --time — show projectb snapshot and reload time (not supported by all archives)
  • -u, --url=URL[,URL ...] — use URL for the query. the supported shorthands are:
 debian https://api.ftp-master.debian.org/madison
 new https://api.ftp-master.debian.org/madison?s=new
 qa https://qa.debian.org/madison.php
 ubuntu https://api.launchpad.net/devel/ubuntu/+archive/primary
 udd https://qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/madison.cgi
 all https://qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/madison.cgi?table=all
 archive https://qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/madison.cgi?table=archived
 ports https://qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/madison.cgi?table=ports

peep the RMADISON_URL_MAP_ variable further down if you wanna add your own new shorthands 💜

  • --version — show version and exit
  • --no-conf, --noconf — don't read the devscripts configuration files

also real quick: ARCH, COMPONENT and SUITE can be comma (or space) separated lists, like:

--architecture=amd64,i386

so go off, list as many as u want 💖

🧚 CONFIGURATION VARIABLES 🧚

the two config files /etc/devscripts.conf and ~/.devscripts get sourced by a shell, in that order, to set configuration variables. command line options can override whatever the config files say. and heads up — environment variable settings are ignored for this purpose. the currently recognised variables are:

  • RMADISON_URL_MAP_SHORTHAND=URL — add an entry to the set of shorthand URLs listed above. SHORTHAND should be replaced with the shorthand form you want to use to refer to URL.

you can specify multiple shorthand entries by using multiple RMADISON_URL_MAP_* variables. stack 'em bestie ✨

  • RMADISON_DEFAULT_URL=URL — set the default URL to use, unless it gets overridden by a command line option. for Debian this defaults to debian. for Ubuntu this defaults to ubuntu.
  • RMADISON_ARCHITECTURE=ARCH — set the default architecture to use, unless it gets overridden by a command line option. to run an unrestricted query when RMADISON_ARCHITECTURE is set, use --architecture='*'.
  • RMADISON_SSL_CA_FILE=FILE — use the specified CA file instead of the default CA bundle for curl/wget, passed as --cacert to curl, and as --ca-certificate to wget.
  • RMADISON_SSL_CA_PATH=PATH — use the specified CA directory instead of the default CA bundle for curl/wget, passed as --capath to curl, and as --ca-directory to wget.

🦋 LAUNCHPAD ARCHIVES 🦋

any URL under https://api.launchpad.net/ gets queried through the Launchpad web service instead of through a madison CGI. besides the ubuntu shorthand, this also works for any other archive Launchpad knows about — for instance a PPA:

  RMADISON_URL_MAP_MYPPA=https://api.launchpad.net/devel/~user/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

only -a, -c, -g, -G, -s and -S are supported for such a query. -b, -r and -t have no equivalent in the web service and get ignored with a warning. not me warning you in advance 🥲

⭐ NOTES ⭐

dak ls was formerly called madison. a glow-up honestly 💅

the protocol used by rmadison is fairly simple — the CGI accepts the query parameters a, b, c, g, G, r, s, S, t, and package. the parameter text is passed to enable plain-text output.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

dak(1), madison-lite(1)

💖 AUTHOR 💖

rmadison and https://qa.debian.org/madison.php were written by Christoph Berg <myon@debian.org>. dak was written by James Troup <james@nocrew.org>, Anthony Towns <ajt@debian.org>, and others.

and that's the whole page bestie, no cap 🎀 this was Debian Utilities, dated 2026-09-21, and it's the RMADISON(1) manual — go query some packages, you absolute icon 👑✨

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