TLDR
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Perl CLI tool querying package lists across 16+ distros and BSDs simultaneously, designed to help maintainers compare ebuilds and pkgbuilds.
Key Takeaways
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Supports Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Mageia, openSUSE, Slackware, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Fink, MacPorts, Cygwin, and more in a single query.
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Output columns are fixed-width (distro, package name, version, date, repo, URL), enabling downstream
grep and cut pipelines.
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Debian queries show version per release channel (oldstable/stable/testing/unstable); Slackware queries Current only; all results are x86.
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Designed for package maintainers learning from cross-distro build definitions, but also useful for users checking software availability per distro.
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Repology and pkgs.org are listed as maintained modern alternatives in the project README itself.
Hacker News Comment Review
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The tool is effectively unmaintained: last release was 11 years ago and repository URLs are hardcoded in a single Perl file, making breakage likely.
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Commenters flagged Repology and an “awesome-package-search” GitHub list as more current alternatives for cross-distro package lookup.
Notable Comments
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@chb: “last release was 11 years ago and…repository domains are hardcoded in the one-file script” – core reliability concern.
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@peter_d_sherman: points to sxiii/awesome-package-search as a broader reference list of Linux package search databases.
Original | Discuss on HN
