Get a simple list of available debian packages, which contains: package name, installed version, new version, short description.
This snipped needs:
- apt-utils
- dpkg
- perl
function c { read input;dpkg -l ${input} | grep " ${input} " | awk '{$1=$2=$3=$4="";print $0}' | sed 's/^ *//';unset input;};function a { apt-get --just-print upgrade 2>&1 | perl -ne 'if (/Inst\s([\w,\-,\d,\.,~,:,\+]+)\s\[([\w,\-,\d,\.,~,:,\+]+)\]\s\(([\w,\-,\d,\.,~,:,\+]+)\)? /i) {print "$1 (\e[1;34m$2\e[0m -> \e[1;32m$3\e[0m)\n"}';};a | while read -r line; do echo -en "$line $(echo $line | awk '{print $1}' | c )\n"; done;
Source: unix.stackexchange.com