APT package release or repository date

Question

I have been searching for a way to obtain a timestamp for when a package was either released for general use or possibly when first loaded on a local repository. Something in either Shell or Python would be ideal, but I'm open to other options at this point. I know packages support a changelog, but it looks like not all packages include a release date.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The answer depends on what exactly you are looking for, and it's not clear from the question. Before reproducible builds were introduced, the date a package was built could be retrieved from the raw ar members such as:

ar tv pkgname_version_arch.deb

If you are looking for the date the package got accepted/uploaded into a specific repository, then the answer will depend on what repository and the software used to manage it. For Debian you can get the information from UDD , from the debian-devel-changes mailing list for the maintainer uploads (but not the buildd uploads, or from package tracker , other derivatives and distributions might have different interfaces or none at all. For other private repositories perhaps there are publicly accessible logs available.

As you mention the changelog can be used for when the source package was prepared, but that might be wildly different to when it got built or even uploaded.