Crate apt_pkg_native

Here lies bindings to libapt-pkg, which is what the apt, apt-get, apt-cache, etc. commands use to view and manipulate the state of packages on the system.

Currently, not much is exposed. You can pretty much only view basic package information, like with apt-cache policy foo.

libapt-pkg has basically no documentation. python-apt is slightly better, but is also pretty inconsistent on the documentation front. The design of this crate is closer to libapt-pkg, despite it being pretty insane.

The core concept here is an "iterator". Forget everything you know about iterators, these iterators are pretty much pointers. The crate attempts to make them act a bit more like Rust Iterators, but is crippled by the insanity.

Methods which "find" something will reposition one of these "iterators" at the right place in an existing stream of items.

I recommend using .map() to turn an "iterator" into a Rust type as soon as possible. The returned map-like thing is a Rust Iterator, so you can do normal operations on it.

Here's an example: normally you wouldn't need this ugly .map(|_| ()) (read as "map anything to the empty object"), but here, it is also converting a sh... apt "iterator" into a real Iterator.

extern crate apt_pkg_native;
let mut cache = apt_pkg_native::Cache::get_singleton();
let total_packages = cache.iter().map(|_| ()).count();

libapt-pkg also just segfaults if you do anything wrong, or re-use anything at the wrong time, or etc. I've tried to hide this, but I advise you not to push or outsmart the borrow checker.

Re-exports

pub use crate::sane::Cache;

Modules

sane
simple	Some structs representing basic concepts, and utilities to copy out of "iterators".