backintime: Where are the sources from?

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

c.buhtz at posteo.jp wrote:

>Let's take the universe package "backintime". Where do you get the 
>sources? Or better asked: How can I know myself?

That will have to happen on a case-by-case basis.

If it's installed, you can use the dpkg status option to get all
sorts of information about the specified package:

dpkg -s backintime

You'll probably be most interested in the "Homepage" URL and the
"Maintainer" or "Original-Maintainer" contact information, so you
could search for those specifically with this command, which will
turn up either of the maintainer entries:

dpkg -s backintime | grep Maintainer

Or this command to get the URL:

dpkg -s backintime | grep Homepage

Installed programs also often put a link to their website in the man
page. The backintime program has such a link in its man page, which
you can get to with this command:

man backintime

Or in the Ubuntu online man-page collection:

https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jammy/man1/backintime.1.html

If the program you're interested in is not installed, you can use apt
to show detailed information on all of the packages that start with
the specified name:

apt show -a backintime*

Since you'll probably be most interested in the URL and the
maintainer's contact information, so you could search for those
specifically with this command to get either of the maintainer
entries:

apt show -a backintime* | grep Maintainer

Or this command to get the URL:

apt show -a backintime* | grep Homepage

If you're still not finding the information you need, then it's time
to do some additional research. You can look for the specified
program on Launchpad:

https://launchpad.net/backintime

You'll see links on that page to the "Home page" and to "External
downloads" which should lead you to the source or to a page that will
take you to the source. There will also be links to "Maintainer" and
"Top contributors" and "More contributors" on the same page in case
you need to follow up with a human. Note that their contact
information will only be provided when you log in..

If all of that fails (like for programs that aren't in the Ubuntu
repositories), you can try Googling with the program's name to see if
that gives you its website and/or one or more of its communities
and/or some more information on where its source files are.

Last, but not least, you can use Ubuntu's IRC client to log in and
get live and relatively immediate (but not always) help in the #ubuntu
channel.

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.