Re: Tool for investigating dependency chains?

[Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net>]

berenger.morel@neutralite.org wrote:
> Le 09.10.2013 19:49, Richard Owlett a écrit :
> > If I can correctly read and follow instructions (friends and
> > family
> > tend to doubt), the above tells me too much about what is already
> > installed and not enough about what is not installed :(
>
> Hehe, I can understand your friends, or maybe I was not clear
> enough. ;)

I think the communication problem is with what I originally wrote.

> You can select installed package, or not: aptitude shows all
> packages you could install, not only the ones you have actually
> installed.
> Plus, there are here another informations that I did not spoke
> about: it will show you the current state of the package, aka:
> installed, automatically installed, removed or absent from the
> system ( it means never installed or purged ). Those informations
> are shown with the characters before the package full name ( name
> + version ). "i" means installed, "iA" means automatically
> installed, "p" is for absent from the system, and "c" is for
> removed ( some configuration are still system-wide installed ).
> Oh, and, "B" means there is a broken dependency, but you will
> guess that with the red color more than with the letter I think.
> Those characters also indicate the actions aptitude will do, but
> I think you will understand that quickly when you will have
> played a little with that tool.

As you say, aptitude tells me much about installed packages.

It tells me only a few things about uninstalled packages:
  1. the name of the package
  2. a description of the package
  3. that the package is not installed

It does not tell me:
  A. the names of packages it recommends be also installed
  B. the description of those packages