DPKG

From GTALUG

DPKG

DPKG or Debian Package is the low level tool developed originally for Debian to manage installation of software packages.

As a low level tool, most end users are encouraged to use higher level tools like apt, aptitude or synaptic to do actual installs.

These tools assists in both building and installing software packages, with an awareness of dependencies (e.g. - KSpread, the KDE spreadsheet, depends on having various KDE and Qt libraries, and so will require that, to install kspread, the other required system components be installed as well).

It supports the notion of versioning, so that your system can be aware of what components must be upgraded together.

It also supports doing relatively orderly deinstallation of software; you can ask to remove a package, and this will be done, if that doesn't break something else by removing some dependency that was required to remain.

Note that DPKG is used by various Category:Linux Distributions.