File: gnupg.info,  Node: Querying versions,  Next: gpgconf.php">Files used by gpgconf,  Prev: Listing global options,  Up: gpgconf

10.4.8 Get and compare software versions.
-----------------------------------------

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.