Re: How to find installed packages not in APT?
On Tue, Feb 04, 2025 at 16:44:06 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 04, 2025 at 11:23:58AM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > <https://manpages.debian.org/bookworm/aptitude/aptitude.8.en.html>
> > includes this paragraph (buried deep, searching for ~ eventually gets
> > to it):
> >
> > This command accepts package names or patterns as arguments. If
> > the string contains a tilde character (“~”) or a question mark
> > (“?”), it will be treated as a search pattern and every package
> > matching the pattern will be considered (see the section “Search
> > Patterns” in the aptitude reference manual).
> >
>
> I think it's just searching for a status matching ?o - so that matches
> "obsolete", for example.
>
> Trying it with '~i' gives you everything that is i[nstalled], by comparison.
> That's a long list, going down to zstd.
>
> aptitude list -h gives you more help detail.
The tilde patterns are definitely not in the output of "aptitude list -h".
I just installed it to try it to find out.
A google search for "aptitude reference manual" brings me to
<https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/> which is entitled
"aptitude user's manual". It has a "Search patterns" section
(at <https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/ch02s04.en.html>)
which might or might not be what the man page was talking about.
Following the pages,
<https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/ch02s04s02.en.html> is the
first place the tilde is mentioned. It has a link to
<https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/ch02s04s05.en.html#tableSearchTermQuickGuide>
which FINALLY appears to document the feature.
Since the table is practically at the top of the page, we don't really
need the anchor reference, so my final answer is:
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/ch02s04s05.en.html
That easily typed and easily memorized link appears to be what we
wanted to see when we typed the overly long and convoluted "man apt".
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