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sometimes when installing a package, aptitude recommends several other packages.

Is there a way to show all previous recommended packages of all installed packages?

Thanks in advance.



Thanks for the replys so far. I already tried:

aptitude show ~i | grep '^Recommends' | cut -d ' ' -f 2-

Thats mostly ok. But it gives also things back like:

 console-setup | console-data (>= 2002.12.04dbs-1)

I want an easy way, to install all missing recommended packages.


 aptitude install console-setup | console-data (>= 2002.12.04dbs-1)

won't work ;-)

Is there a way, without manual checking all entries, to do this?

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4 Answers 4

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Synaptic -> Custom Filters -> Missing Recommends


aptitude search '~RBrecommends:~i'

(thanks to http://blog.isonoe.net/post/2011/07/18/Debian-Tips-1%3A-Find-missing-recommended-packages)

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Maybe there's a more elegant way, but this works for me,

for package in $(dpkg --get-selections | grep -v deinstall | awk '{print $1}')
    echo $package
    dpkg-query -s $package | grep Recommends
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another suggestion:

awk '/(^Package|^Recomm)/' /var/lib/dpkg/status | grep -B1 ^Recommends

@EightBitTony: awk is also very good in searching, try this:

dpkg --get-selections | awk ' !/deinstall$/{print $1}'
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Here my way - report for missing recommends :)

apt-cache --no-pre-depends --no-depends --no-suggests --no-conflicts --no-breaks --no-replaces --no-enhances depends `dpkg --get-selections | grep '\sinstall$' | cut -f1` | grep -vf <(dpkg --get-selections | grep '\sinstall$' | cut -f1 | sed -e 's/^/ /' -e 's/\(:.*\|\)$/$/') | grep -B1 '^ '
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