SYNOPSIS

apt-rdepends [options] [pkgs ...]

DESCRIPTION

apt-rdepends searches through the \s-1APT\s0 cache to find package dependencies. apt-rdepends knows how to emulate the result of calling apt-cache with both depends and dotty options.

By default, apt-rdepends shows a listing of each dependency a package has. It will also look at each of these fulfilling packages, and recursively lists their dependencies.

OPTIONS

-b, --build-depends

Show build dependencies instead of normal package dependencies.

-d, --dotty

dotty takes a list of packages on the command line and generates output suitable for use by springgraph (1). The result will be a set of nodes and edges representing the relationships between the packages. By default the given packages will trace out all dependent packages which can produce a very large graph. Blue lines are pre-depends, green lines are conflicts, yellow lines are suggests, orange lines are recommends, red lines are replaces, and black lines are depends. Caution, dotty cannot graph larger sets of packages.

-p, --print-state

Shows the state of each dependency after each package version. See --state-follow and --state-show for why this is useful.

-r, --reverse

Shows the listings of each package that depends on a package. Furthermore, it will look at these dependent packages, and find their dependers.

-f, --follow=\s-1DEPENDS\s0

A comma-separated list of \s-1DEPENDS\s0 types to follow recursively. By default, it only follows the Depends and PreDepends types. The possible values for \s-1DEPENDS\s0 are: Depends, PreDepends, Suggests, Recommends, Conflicts, Replaces, and Obsoletes. In --build-depends mode, the possible values are: Build-Depends, Build-Depends-Indep, Build-Conflicts, Build-Conflicts-Indep.

-s, --show=\s-1DEPENDS\s0

A comma-separated list of \s-1DEPENDS\s0 types to show, when displaying a listing. By default, it only shows the Depends and PreDepends types.

--state-follow=\s-1STATES\s0
--state-show=\s-1STATES\s0

These two options are similar to --follow and --show. They both deal with the current state of a package. By default, the value of \s-1STATES\s0 is Unknown, NotInstalled, UnPacked, HalfConfigured, HalfInstalled, ConfigFiles, and Installed. These options are useful, if you only want to only look at the dependencies between the Installed packages on your system. You can then call:

apt-rdepends --state-follow=Installed libfoo

Or if you want to only show the packages installed on your system:

apt-rdepends --state-follow=Installed --state-show=Installed libfoo

pkgs

The list of packages on which to discover dependencies.

-v, --vcg, --xvcg

This option takes a list of packages on the command line and generates output suitable for use by xvcg. The result will be a set of nodes and edges representing the relationships between the packages. By default the given packages will trace out all dependent packages which can produce a very large graph. Blue lines are pre-depends, green lines are conflicts, yellow lines are suggests, orange lines are recommends, red lines are replaces, and black lines are depends.

-o, --option=\s-1OPTION\s0

Set an \s-1APT\s0 Configuration Option; This will set an arbitrary configuration option. The syntax is -o Foo::Bar=bar.

RELATED TO apt-rdepends…

BUGS

apt-rdepends does not emulate apt-cache perfectly. It does not display information about virtual packages, nor does it know about virtual packages when it is in reverse dependency mode.

apt-rdepends also does not know how to stop after a certain depth has been reached.

apt-rdepends cannot do reverse build-dependencies. This is really difficult, since it would have to load the whole cache into memory before discovering which packages depend on others to build.

apt-rdepends exists. This functionality should really reside in apt-cache itself.

AUTHOR

apt-rdepends was written by Simon Law <[email protected]>