Re: apt: exporting and importing list of installed packages

[Jens Grivolla <j-news2003-10@grivolla.de>]

Paul Yeatman <pyeatman@ucsd.edu> writes:

>> > Is there a way to dump my current selection to a file and read it back
>> > later?  I didn't find such an option in aptitude or any of the other
>> > tools.
>
> 	dpkg --get-selections > <filename>

Ok, this gives me a list of packages like "<package> install" for
installed packages, "<package> deinstall" for packages marked 'c' in
aptitude (which I have purged now).  Packages marked 'A' in aptitude
simply seem to not be in the list (they should get fetched
automatically anyway).

> 	dpkg --set-selections < <filename>

It is not quite clear to me from the man-page what would happen to
already installed packages.  I suppose that set-selections only
affects those packages that are actually in the list.

I would then possibly need to make a diff between my wanted list and
the actual result of `dpkg --get-selections` after installation.

Thanks (to everybody else who answered, too).

Ciao,
   Jens