I’ve been trying to remember to implement items from my zsh-dwim notes in my spare time. I managed to implement some apt and dpkg helpers this week.

add-apt-repository –> apt-get update

Every six months I upgrade Ubuntu. I always end up having to add at least one or two PPA repositories, using the add-apt-repository command, every single time I upgrade. Just about every add-apt-repository command is followed by an apt-get upgrade. This transformation was definitely a no-brainer.

which –> dpkg -S –> apt-cache show

This one was a little less obvious, but probably just as useful. Often enough, I’m interested in finding out exactly which package the file returned by the which command belongs to. That usually means either typing dpkg -S and pasting in the path, or recalling the previous command from history and manually adding the dpkg -S and the required backticks.

That just seems like too much work. Now I just hit control-u, and the which command is converted directly into a correctly formatted dpkg -S command.

I ended up taking it one step further. Hitting control-u on a dpkg -S command will transform the command into a slightly buggy apt-cache show $(dpkg -S ) command. I’m not terribly happy with how the end result turned out; it ends up generating a rather verbose command.

You can find zsh-dwim at GitHub.