When you run
aptitude
, you are shown a list of packages sorted by state (installed, not-installed,
or installed but not available on the mirrors), while other sections display tasks, virtual packages,
and new packages that appeared recently on mirrors. To facilitate thematic browsing, other views
are available.
In all cases,
aptitude
displays a list combining categories and packages on the screen. Categories
are organized through a tree structure, whose branches can respectively be unfolded or folded
with the Enter, [, and ] keys. The + key should be used to mark a package for installation, - to mark
it for removal, and _ to purge it. Note that these keys can also be used for categories, in which case
the corresponding actions will be applied to all the packages of the category. The u key updates
the lists of available packages and Shift+u prepares a global system upgrade. The g key switches
to a summary view of the requested changes (and typing g again will apply the changes), and q
quits the current view. If you are in the initial view, this will close
aptitude
.
aptitude
’s Documentation
This section does not cover the finer details of using
aptitude
, it rather focuses on
giving you a user survival kit.
aptitude
is rather well documented and we advise
you to use its complete manual available in the
aptitude-doc-en
package (see
/usr/
share/doc/aptitude/html/en/index.html
) or at
è
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/
.
To search for a package, you can type / followed by a search pattern. This pattern matches the
name of the package but can also be applied to the description (if preceded by ~d), to the section
(with ~s), or to other characteristics detailed in the documentation. The same patterns can filter
the list of displayed packages: type the l key (as in
limit) and enter the pattern.
Managing the
automatic flag of Debian packages (see section
8.3.4
, “
Tracking Automatically In-
stalled Packages
” [page 205]) is a breeze with
aptitude
. It is possible to browse the list of installed
packages and mark packages as automatic with Shift+m or you can remove the mark with the m
key. Automatic packages are displayed with an “A” in the list of packages. This feature also offers
a simple way to visualize the packages in use on a machine, without all the libraries and depen-
dencies that you don’t really care about. The related pattern that can be used with l (to activate
the filter mode) is ~i!~M. It specifies that you only want to see installed packages (~i) not marked
as automatic (!~M).
