gnupg: Querying versions
9.4.8 Get and compare software versions.
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The GnuPG Project operates a server to query the current versions of
software packages related to GnuPG. 'gpgconf' can be used to access this
online database. To allow for offline operations, this feature works by
having 'dirmngr' download a file from 'https://versions.gnupg.org',
checking the signature of that file and storing the file in the GnuPG
home directory. If 'gpgconf' is used and 'dirmngr' is running, it may
ask 'dirmngr' to refresh that file before itself uses the file.
The command '--query-swdb' returns information for the given package
in a colon delimited format:
NAME
This is the name of the package as requested. Note that "gnupg" is
a special name which is replaced by the actual package implementing
this version of GnuPG. For this name it is also not required to
specify a version because 'gpgconf' takes its own version in this
case.
IVERSION
The currently installed version or an empty string. The value is
taken from the command line argument but may be provided by gpg if
not given.
STATUS
The status of the software package according to this table:
'-'
No information available. This is either because no current
version has been specified or due to an error.
'?'
The given name is not known in the online database.
'u'
An update of the software is available.
'c'
The installed version of the software is current.
'n'
The installed version is already newer than the released
version.
URGENCY
If the value (the empty string should be considered as zero) is
greater than zero an important update is available.
ERROR
This returns an 'gpg-error' error code to distinguish between
various failure modes.
FILEDATE
This gives the date of the file with the version numbers in
standard ISO format ('yyyymmddThhmmss'). The date has been
extracted by 'dirmngr' from the signature of the file.
VERIFIED
This gives the date in ISO format the file was downloaded. This
value can be used to evaluate the freshness of the information.
VERSION
This returns the version string for the requested software from the
file.
RELDATE
This returns the release date in ISO format.
SIZE
This returns the size of the package as decimal number of bytes.
HASH
This returns a hexified SHA-2 hash of the package.
More fields may be added in future to the output.
Info Catalog
gnupg: Listing global options
gnupg: gpgconf
gnupg: Files used by gpgconf