SPI(8)

NAME
spi - The Slackware Package Inspector

SYNOPSIS
spi [ -v | -h ]
spi [[ -i ] -s | -e string ]
spi [ -p | -m string ]
spi [ -b | -u [ -n source | -c ]]
spi [ -l section [version] ]
spi [ -k ]
spi [ -x path section [version] ]

DESCRIPTION
SPI is a command line tool which gives you informations and characteristics of Slackware packages, installed or not, in your system. The idea was to create an efficent tool in order to increase the knowledge of your system and not for give any automation in software installation process, as in Slackware philosophy. SPI builds his berkeley database from different sources; they could be remote repositories (official or not, like slackware official mirrors, linuxpackages mirriors ecc..), local repositories, and obiouvsly from your current local installation. A good pratice with SPI configuration file (spi.conf), will permits you to create a very powerfull and rich database to query for different administration purposes like crash recovery, hard installations, dependencies analysis (not resolution) etc etc. The bulding procedure considers all different data sources specified in the config file, for example a ftp slackware mirror, installation cdroms or a local repository. It downloads the opportune MANIFESTs and PACKAGES files, parse them and checks the installation state of the packages; finally writes all informations into the spi database. If we edit the config file and change for example ftp sources or uncomment specific sections (like slackware, extra, testing, pasture) we can simply 'update' the existing database.

COMMAND LINE OPTIONS

-h, --help
    Print help.

-v, --version
    Print SPI version

-i, --insensitive
    Performs case insensitive searches.

-s, --search string
    Match the required string parameter.

-e, --exact string
    Match exactly the required string parameter.

-u, --update
    Update database.

-b, --build
    Build the database.

-p, --pkg-info string
    Match the required string (or substring) paramenter and returns the complete package info.

-n, --net source
    Download packages information from a mirror

-l, --list section version
    List installation state of packages contained in a specific section of a specific Slackware version

-m, --files package
    List all files installed by the package

-c, --cdrom
    Use Slackware Install Cdrom as packages data source

-k, --checkversion
    Ask of a new version of spi is available

-x, --external repository-path repository-packages-section repository-packages-version
    Take a local packages repository as source for spi database

FILES AND DIRECTORIES
The default installation prefix is /usr/local.

${prefix}/bin/spi
    Recommended location of spi.

${prefix}/lib/spi/
    Recommended location of the directory containing the Spi library.

/etc/spi
    Recommended location of Spi configuration file (spi.conf).

/var/cache/spi
    This directory is a placeholder for spi database.

LICENSING
Spi is distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file "COPYING" in the Spi source distribution for information on terms & conditions for accessing and otherwise using Spi and for a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES.

INTERNET RESOURCES
The URL of the spi's website is http://spi.slackit.org.

AUTHOR
Nicola La Gloria <weird@slackit.org>