Looking for collaborator with Debian experience

["Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>]

I maintain a utility called `harvester' that can be taught how to poll
web pages and FTP directories and download package updates from them,
sending notification mail to the administrator.  The utility is
written in Python, and presently detects and downloads RPMs reliably.
It does as little work as possible; each potential download is checked
against the lists of already-installed and already-downloaded RPMs.

I use harvester to pull down any pending updates from the Red Hat and
GNOME pages at 0400 each morning.

I'm seeking a collaborator familiar with the Debian package system to
assist me in enhancing harvester so that it can do the same service
for Debian packages.   I need the following things:

1. To know the Debian equivalent of `rpm -qa'.

2. To understand the conventions used for naming .deb files, so I can
   write regexps to parse them.

3. Someone to test harvester under Debian.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr";>Eric S. Raymond</a>

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for
one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because
it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils
except destruction.  The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of
such a nature.  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined
to commit crimes.
        -- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book

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