title: How to compare installed Linux packages between two machines
body: <p>I need to display a list of Linux software packages that differ in version between a ‘build machine’ and various ‘developer machines’ that can diverge over time from the build VM.</p>
  
  <p>I can get quite far by doing a “dpkg –l” to obtain a text dump of the packages installed on the gold VM versus other boxes, and then doing things like a "diff" or “awk grep” on the two lists, but I wondered if there was already a tool that does a better job than me writing a script for the job.</p>
  
  <p>How do you guys do this?</p>
  
  <p>Jean-Pierre</p>