Man page 8 : apt-config

apt-config - APT Configuration Query program

apt-config [-hv] [-o=\fBconfig string\fR] [-c=\fBfile\fR] {[shell] | [dump]}

apt-config is an internal program used by various portions of the APT suite to provide consistent configurability. It accesses the main configuration file /etc/apt/apt.conf in a manner that is easy to use by scripted applications.

Unless the -h, or --help option is given one of the commands below must be present.

shell
    shell is used to access the configuration information from a shell script. It is given pairs of arguments, the first being a shell variable and the second the configuration value to query. As output it lists a series of shell assignments commands for each present value. In a shell script it should be used like:


    .

OPTS="-f"
RES=`apt-config shell OPTS MyApp::options`
eval $RES

. This will set the shell environment variable $OPTS to the value of MyApp::options with a default of -f.

The configuration item may be postfixed with a /[fdbi]. f returns file names, d returns directories, b returns true or false and i returns an integer. Each of the returns is normalized and verified internally.

dump
    Just show the contents of the configuration space.

All command line options may be set using the configuration file, the descriptions indicate the configuration option to set. For boolean options you can override the config file by using something like -f-,--no-f, -f=no or several other variations.

-h, --help
    Show a short usage summary.

-v, --version
    Show the program version.

-c, --config-file
    Configuration File; Specify a configuration file to use. The program will read the default configuration file and then this configuration file. If configuration settings need to be set before the default configuration files are parsed specify a file with the APT_CONFIG environment variable. See apt.conf(5) for syntax information.

-o, --option
    Set a Configuration Option; This will set an arbitrary configuration option. The syntax is -o Foo::Bar=bar. -o and --option can be used multiple times to set different options.

apt.conf(5)

apt-config returns zero on normal operation, decimal 100 on error.

\m[blue]APT bug page\m[]\s-2\u[1]\d\s+2. If you wish to report a bug in APT, please see /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt or the reportbug(1) command.

Jason Gunthorpe

APT team

1. 4 APT bug page
    http://bugs.debian.org/src:apt