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Re: Showing recommended packages from cli



On Monday 21 June 2010 12:27:47 Todd A. Jacobs wrote:
> Is there some functionality in apt-cache or aptitude for displaying
> recommended files, other than having to visually parse the output of
> "apt-cache show"?

If you can handle the *curses interface of aptitude do:
1. Execute 'aptitude'.
2. Press Ctrl+T.
3. Use left/right to navigate to "Views".
4. Use up/down to navigate to "Audit Recommendations".

This shows anything recommended but not installed.  By using up/down to 
highlight a particular recommendation, you can see why it is recommended in 
the bottom pane.

Aptitude does this (mostly) with a package limit, and we can easily see what 
it is.  Press 'l'.  This allows you to edit the package limit, but it shows 
the current one so we can note it.  "!~v!~i~RBrecommends:~i"

With this magic string, we can get much of this data from the command line.  
Simply issuing (aptitude search '!~v!~i~RBrecommends:~i') from the shell will 
basically give us the data in the top frame.

For any particular package in that list (e.g. policykit-gnome), you can also 
determine why it would be recommended from the command line.  Simply issuing 
(aptitude why '~i' 'policykit-gnome') will give the "most installed, 
strongest, tightest, shortest" reason to install that package, which should be 
a recommendation.  Try (aptitude -v why '~i' 'policykit-gnome') for other 
interesting results.
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