Show why package is being installed or show which installed package depends on it.

[James Robertson <j@mesrobertson.com>]

I would like to know why a certain package is going to be installed or at least find out which package installed on my system is depending on it.

This came about as I was upgrading my Sid Laptop and noticed that it wanted to install Hal during an apt-get dist-upgrade.  I am using consolekit and policykit and did not think I should need Hal anymore.  I would rather identify the package depending on it an look for alternatives.

I tried apt-rdepends but frankly got a little lost with it's usage in my situation.

I also tried this horrible hack:

for i in $(dpkg -l | awk '{print $2}') ; do apt-cache show $i | grep -i hal | grep Package ; done

Thanks.