dpkg(1) - package manager for Debian
-i, --install package-file...
       Install the package. If --recursive or -R option  is  specified,  package-file  must  refer  to  a
       directory instead.

              Installation consists of the following steps:

              1. Extract the control files of the new package.

              2. If another version of the same package was installed before the new installation, execute prerm
              script of the old package.

              3. Run preinst script, if provided by the package.

              4. Unpack the new files, and at the same time back up the old files, so  that  if  something  goes
              wrong, they can be restored.

              5.  If  another version of the same package was installed before the new installation, execute the
              postrm script of the old package. Note that this script is executed after the  preinst  script  of
              the new package, because new files are written at the same time old files are removed.

              6. Configure the package. See --configure for detailed information about how this is done.
--unpack package-file...
       Unpack the package, but don't configure it. If --recursive or -R option is specified, package-file
       must refer to a directory instead.
--configure package...|-a|--pending
       Configure a package which has been unpacked but not yet configured.  If -a or --pending  is  given
       instead of package, all unpacked but unconfigured packages are configured.

       To  reconfigure  a  package which has already been configured, try the dpkg-reconfigure(8) command
       instead.

       Configuring consists of the following steps:

       1. Unpack the conffiles, and at the same time back up the old  conffiles,  so  that  they  can  be
       restored if something goes wrong.

       2. Run postinst script, if provided by the package.
--triggers-only package...|-a|--pending
       Processes  only  triggers.  All  pending triggers will be processed. If package names are supplied
       only those packages' triggers will be processed, exactly once each where necessary.  Use  of  this
       option  may  leave packages in the improper triggers-awaited and triggers-pending states. This can
       be fixed later by running: dpkg --configure --pending.
-r, --remove, -P, --purge package...|-a|--pending
       Remove an installed package. -r or --remove remove everything except  conffiles.  This  may  avoid
       having  to  reconfigure the package if it is reinstalled later. (Conffiles are configuration files
       that are listed in the DEBIAN/conffiles control file). -P or --purge removes everything, including
       conffiles.  If -a or --pending is given instead of a package name, then all packages unpacked, but
       marked to be removed or purged in file /var/lib/dpkg/status, are removed or purged,  respectively.
       Note:  some  configuration  files  might  be  unknown to dpkg because they are created and handled
       separately through the configuration scripts. In that case, dpkg won't remove them by itself,  but
       the  package's  postrm  script (which is called by dpkg), has to take care of their removal during
       purge. Of course, this only applies to  files  in  system  directories,  not  configuration  files
       written to individual users' home directories.

       Removing of a package consists of the following steps:

       1. Run prerm script

       2. Remove the installed files

       3. Run postrm script
--update-avail, --merge-avail Packages-file
       Update  dpkg's  and dselect's idea of which packages are available. With action --merge-avail, old
       information is combined with information  from  Packages-file.  With  action  --update-avail,  old
       information  is  replaced with the information in the Packages-file. The Packages-file distributed
       with  Debian  is  simply  named  Packages.  dpkg  keeps  its  record  of  available  packages   in
       /var/lib/dpkg/available.

       A  simpler one-shot command to retrieve and update the available file is dselect update. Note that
       this file is mostly useless if you don't use dselect but an APT-based frontend: APT  has  its  own
       system to keep track of available packages.
-A, --record-avail package-file...
       Update  dpkg  and dselect's idea of which packages are available with information from the package
       package-file. If --recursive or -R option is specified, package-file must  refer  to  a  directory
       instead.
--forget-old-unavail
       Now obsolete and a no-op as dpkg will automatically forget uninstalled unavailable packages.
--clear-avail
       Erase the existing information about what packages are available.
-C, --audit
      Searches  for  packages  that have been installed only partially on your system. dpkg will suggest
      what to do with them to get them working.
--get-selections [package-name-pattern...]
       Get list of package selections, and write it to stdout. Without a pattern, non-installed  packages
       (i.e. those which have been previously purged) will not be shown.
--set-selections
       Set  package  selections  using  file  read from stdin. This file should be in the format 'package
       state', where state is one of install, hold, deinstall or purge. Blank  lines  and  comment  lines
       beginning with '#' are also permitted.
--clear-selections
       Set  the requested state of every non-essential package to deinstall.  This is intended to be used
       immediately  before  --set-selections,  to  deinstall  any  packages  not   in   list   given   to
       --set-selections.
--yet-to-unpack
       Searches  for  packages  selected  for  installation, but which for some reason still haven't been
       installed.
--print-architecture
       Print architecture of packages dpkg installs (for example, "i386").
--foreign-architecture architecture
       Add architecture to the list of architectures for which packages can be  installed  without
       using  --force-architecture,  in  addition to the architecture dpkg is built for (i.e.: the
       output of --print-architecture).
--print-foreign-architectures
       Print a space-separated list of  the  extra  architectures  dpkg  is  configured  to  allow
       packages to be installed for.
--compare-versions ver1 op ver2
       Compare  version numbers, where op is a binary operator. dpkg returns success (zero result)
       if the specified condition is satisfied, and failure (nonzero result) otherwise. There  are
       two  groups of operators, which differ in how they treat an empty ver1 or ver2. These treat
       an empty version as earlier than any version: lt le eq ne  ge  gt.  These  treat  an  empty
       version  as  later  than  any version: lt-nl le-nl ge-nl gt-nl. These are provided only for
       compatibility with control file syntax: < << <= = >= >> >.
--command-fd n
       Accept a series of commands on input file descriptor n. Note: additional options set on the
       command  line,  and  through  this  file  descriptor, are not reset for subsequent commands
       executed during the same run.
--help Display a brief help message.
--force-help
       Give help about the --force-thing options.
-Dh, --debug=help
       Give help about debugging options.
--version
       Display dpkg version information.
       -b, --build directory [archive|directory]
           Build a deb package.
       -c, --contents archive
           List contents of a deb package.
       -e, --control filename [directory]
           Extract control-information from a package.
       -x, --extract archive directory
           Extract the files contained by package.
       -X, --vextract archive directory
           Extract and display the filenames contained by a
           package.
       -f, --field  archive [control-field...]
           Display control field(s) of a package.
       --fsys-tarfile archive
           Display the filesystem tar-file contained by a
           Debian package.
       -I, --info archive [control-file...]
           Show information about a package.

dpkg-query actions
       See dpkg-query(1) for more information about the following actions.
-l, --list package-name-pattern...
    List packages matching given pattern.
-s, --status package-name...
    Report status of specified package.
-L, --listfiles package-name...
    List files installed to your system from package-name.
-S, --search filename-search-pattern...
    Search for a filename from installed packages.
-p, --print-avail package-name...
    Display details about package-name, as found in
    /var/lib/dpkg/available. Users of APT-based frontends
    should use apt-cache show package-name instead.
--abort-after=number
       Change after how many errors dpkg will abort. The default is 50.
-B, --auto-deconfigure
       When  a  package is removed, there is a possibility that another installed package depended
       on the removed package. Specifying this option will cause automatic deconfiguration of  the
       package which depended on the removed package.
-Doctal, --debug=octal
       Switch  debugging  on.  octal  is formed by bitwise-orring desired values together from the
       list below (note that these values may change in  future  releases).  -Dh  or  --debug=help
       display these debugging values.

           Number   Description
                1   Generally helpful progress information
                2   Invocation and status of maintainer scripts
               10   Output for each file processed
              100   Lots of output for each file processed
               20   Output for each configuration file
              200   Lots of output for each configuration file
               40   Dependencies and conflicts
              400   Lots of dependencies/conflicts output
            10000   Trigger activation and processing
            20000   Lots of output regarding triggers
            40000   Silly amounts of output regarding triggers
             1000   Lots of drivel about e.g. the dpkg/info dir
             2000   Insane amounts of drivel
--force-things, --no-force-things, --refuse-things
--ignore-depends=package,...
       Ignore  dependency-checking  for  specified  packages (actually, checking is performed, but
       only warnings about conflicts are given, nothing else).
--no-act, --dry-run, --simulate
       Do everything which is supposed to be done, but don't write any changes. This  is  used  to
       see what would happen with the specified action, without actually modifying anything.

              Be  sure to give --no-act before the action-parameter, or you might end up with undesirable
              results. (e.g. dpkg --purge foo --no-act will first purge package foo and then try to purge
              package --no-act, even though you probably expected it to actually do nothing)
-R, --recursive
       Recursively  handle all regular files matching pattern *.deb found at specified directories
       and all of its subdirectories. This can be  used  with  -i,  -A,  --install,  --unpack  and
       --avail actions.
-G     Don't  install  a package if a newer version of the same package is already installed. This
       is an alias of --refuse-downgrade.
--admindir=dir
       Change default administrative directory, which contains many files  that  give  information
       about status of installed or uninstalled packages, etc.  (Defaults to /var/lib/dpkg)
--instdir=dir
       Change  default  installation directory which refers to the directory where packages are to
       be installed. instdir is also the directory passed to chroot(2)  before  running  package's
       installation  scripts,  which  means  that  the  scripts  see  instdir as a root directory.
       (Defaults to /)
--root=dir
       Changing root changes instdir to dir and admindir to dir/var/lib/dpkg.
-O, --selected-only
       Only process the packages that are selected for installation. The actual  marking  is  done
       with  dselect or by dpkg, when it handles packages. For example, when a package is removed,
       it will be marked selected for deinstallation.
-E, --skip-same-version
       Don't install the package if the same version of the package is already installed.
--pre-invoke=command
--post-invoke=command
       Set an invoke hook command to be run via “sh -c” before or  after  the  dpkg  run  for  the
       unpack,  configure,  install, triggers-only, remove and purge dpkg actions. This option can
       be specified multiple times. The order the options are specified  is  preserved,  with  the
       ones   from   the   configuration   files  taking  precedence.   The  environment  variable
       DPKG_HOOK_ACTION is set for the hooks to the current dpkg action.  Note:  front-ends  might
       call dpkg several times per invocation, which might run the hooks more times than expected.
--path-exclude=glob-pattern
--path-include=glob-pattern
       Set  glob-pattern as a path filter, either by excluding or re-including previously excluded
       paths matching the specified patterns during install.

       Warning: take into account that depending on the excluded paths you might completely  break
       your system, use with caution.

       The  glob  patterns use the same wildcards used in the shell, were '*' matches any sequence
       of characters, including the empty string and also '/'. For example, '/usr/*/READ*' matches
       '/usr/share/doc/package/README'.   As  usual,  '?'  matches  any  single  character (again,
       including '/'). And '[' starts a character class, which can contain a list  of  characters,
       ranges and complementations. See glob(7) for detailed information about globbing. Note: the
       current implementation might re-include more directories and symlinks than needed, to be on
       the safe side and avoid possible unpack failures, future work might fix this.

       This can be used to remove all paths except some particular ones; a typical case is:

              --path-exclude=/usr/share/doc/*
              --path-include=/usr/share/doc/*/copyright

              to remove all documentation files except the copyright files.

              These  two  options  can be specified multiple times, and interleaved with each other. Both
              are processed in the given order, with the last rule that matches a file  name  making  the
              decision.
--status-fd n
       Send  machine-readable  package  status and progress information to file descriptor n. This
       option can be specified multiple times. The information is generally one record  per  line,
       in one of the following forms:

       status: package: status
              Package status changed; status is as in the status file.

       status: package : error : extended-error-message
              An error occurred. Any possible newlines in extended-error-message will be converted
              to spaces before output.

       status: file : conffile-prompt : 'real-old' 'real-new' useredited distedited
              User is being asked a conffile question.

       processing: stage: package
              Sent just before a processing stage starts. stage is one of upgrade,  install  (both
              sent before unpacking), configure, trigproc, disappear, remove, purge.
--status-logger=command
       Send  machine-readable  package  status  and  progress  information  to the shell command's
       standard input. This option can be specified multiple times. The output format used is  the
       same as in --status-fd.
--log=filename
       Log   status   change   updates   and   actions   to   filename,  instead  of  the  default
       /var/log/dpkg.log. If this option is given multiple times, the last filename is  used.  Log
       messages  are  of  the  form  `YYYY-MM-DD  HH:MM:SS status state pkg installed-version' for
       status change updates; `YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS action pkg installed-version available-version'
       for  actions  where  action  is  one  of  install,  upgrade, remove, purge; and `YYYY-MM-DD
       HH:MM:SS conffile filename decision' for conffile changes where decision is either  install
       or keep.
--no-debsig
       Do not try to verify package signatures.
--no-triggers
       Do  not  run  any  triggers in this run (activations will still be recorded).  If used with
       --configure package or --triggers-only package then the named package postinst  will  still
       be  run even if only a triggers run is needed. Use of this option may leave packages in the
       improper triggers-awaited and triggers-pending states. This can be fixed later by  running:
       dpkg --configure --pending.
--triggers
       Cancels a previous --no-triggers.