Re: Make upgrade of named packages also upgrade their Recommends?

[Jörg-Volker Peetz <jvpeetz@web.de>]

aptitude might help you in this case.

To find all packages recommended, for example, by apt call

  aptitude -F "%M%a %p %v# %V#" search '~i~Rrecommends:^apt$'

it shows the installed version of the package(s) and the version the package can 
be upgraded to.
For upgrading all packages recommended by apt call

  aptitude install '~U~Rrecommends:^apt$'

The "^" and "$" characters indicate that just the recommendations for the 
package beginning with apt and ending with apt are to be considered.

Regards,
Jörg.