How to tell when a package was last updated?

[Chris Green]

On Wed, Jun 03, 2020 at 11:56:36AM +0100, Ian Bruntlett wrote:
>    Hi Chris,
>    On Wed, 3 Jun 2020 at 11:34, Chris Green <[1]cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> 
>      Is there any way to see when apt (or dpkg below it) last updated a
>      particular package?
> 
>    Yes. This web page offers some help on this:-
>    [2]https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/debian-ubuntu-linux-apt-get-aptitude-s
>    how-package-version-command/
>    Personally, with command line tools I use the --version option, where
>    available.
>    For GUI stuff I look it up in Synaptic. There are command line options
>    such as apt list.
> 
All those tell me is what version is installed now, it doesn't tell me
*when* it was installed which is what I want to know.  

I'd already used --version (well, actually -V for the program in
question) to see the date of the version that is installed. 

The date returned by --version (or -V) is simply the date of the
creation of the package, it doesn't tell when that version was added
to the repository which is, basically, what I want to know.


>      I am seeing some changes in how something works and I'm trying to
>      find
>      out whether it's because I have changed something inadvertently (in
>      its configuration) or if a new version has been installed when I did
>      an 'apt update' which acts slightly differently from the previous
>      version.
> 
>    Cryptic :)

Seemed irrelevant to the question.  I use tin as my newsreader and the
default screen layout had changed and I wondered why, i.e. had I
changed the configuration by mistake or had an update changed something?

So I see (for tin) :-

    chris$ tin -V
    Version: tin 2.4.4 release 20190307 ("Glen Mhor") Sep  5 2019 11:14:24

But what I want to know is when this version of tin was added to the
[x]ubuntu 19.10 distribution.


-- 
Chris Green