It is kind of hard to memorize all the query commands dnf accrued over time. Because it is a command line tool, the underlying data model is not really clear, so what do you think about this interface to export the data from dnf for external processing?
$ dnf data
usage: dnf data [command]
commands:
table operate with data tables
tables list available data tables
$ dnf data tables
tables
--------
packages
updates
$ dnf data table
usage: dnf data table [options] <table> [columns]
$ dnf data table updates
name | old | new
----------------
dnf | 1.0 | 1.1
$ dnf data table --csv updates name,new
dnf,1.1
dnf only knows about update versions, not about all the other bits that live on Bodhi. So, you’ll also need to incorporate that. Here’s an example:
I’m quite happy to use the different tools to get the info I need, but yeh, if you want one tool to do it all, feel free to write it
dnfdragora may be worth looking at to see which of your use cases it already serves?
dnf data will allow to introspect what dnf doesn’t know. Right now figuring this out is a way too much complicated and time consuming. Need either to ask here or scan through entire man.
I didn’t think about that in the “social” context of dnf. For the start, just a generic interface to dump its internal database and dynamic “views” would be fine. If dnf will learn how to access bodhi data for whatever purpose, the interface can be used to explore that as well.
Generic export interface also helps to automatically figure out data structure changes between versions.