Bug#525189: Wishlist: "apt-get install" that understands syntax of Depends, etc fields

[Daniel Hartwig <mandyke@gmail.com>]

Christian Hudon <chrish@pianocktail.org> wrote:
> Package: apt
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Hello,
>
> Sometimes, I need to cut and paste the contents of a Depends field (from 
> running "dpkg -s", etc.) or from a Build-depend line (from the control 
> file of a .deb whose source I just unpacked) to install packages 
> required by a package that I downloaded separately. It'd be really nice 
> if "apt-get install" understood the syntax of those fields directly 
> instead of having to edit the command line to remove all the commas, the 
> minimum version requirements, the ORs (with "|") before pressing enter.

There are a number of obvious reasons to not include such support in
apt.  It is preferable to have a small, separate utility rather than
arbitrarily extend apts scope to include what is effectively ad hoc
package creation.

For Build-Depends you can use mk-build-deps from package devscripts.
For example:

# mk-build-deps -i debian/control

For the general case, you can use equivs to produce a fake package.  Im
sure it is also simple to extend equivs so that you can specify the
depends, build, and install in one command.

See also <http://bugs.debian.org/214566>, which is a similar request for
dpkg.  Both of these are best satisfied by a separate tool.

Regards