Daniel Burrows dburrows@debian.org This manual page is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This manual page is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this manual page; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA &aptitude; 8 &aptitude; high-level interface to the package manager aptitude options autoclean clean forget-new update upgrade aptitude options changelog dist-upgrade download forbid-version hold markauto purge reinstall remove show unmarkauto packages aptitude options search patterns aptitude -S fname -u -i aptitude help &aptitude; is a text-based interface to the Debian GNU/Linux package system. It allows the user to view the list of packages and to perform package management tasks such as installing, upgrading, and removing packages. Actions may be performed from a visual interface or from the command-line. The first argument which does not begin with a hyphen (-) is considered to be an action that the program should perform. If an action is not specified on the command-line, &aptitude; will start up in visual mode. The following actions are available: install Install one or more packages. The packages should be listed after the install command; if a package name contains a tilde character (~), it will be treated as a search pattern and every package matching the pattern will be installed (see the section Search Patterns in the &aptitude; reference manual). To select a particular version of the package, append =version to the package name: for instance, aptitude install apt=0.3.1. Similarly, to select a package from a particular archive, append /archive to the package name: for instance, aptitude install apt/experimental. Appending -, +, _, or = to the name of a package will cause the package to be removed, installed, purged, or held respectively. This can be used, for instance, to perform multiple actions from one command line. As a special case, install with no arguments will act on any stored/pending actions. The install command will modify &aptitude;'s stored information about what actions to perform. Therefore, if you issue (e.g.) the command aptitude install foo bar and then abort the installation, you will need to run aptitude remove foo bar to cancel that order. remove, purge, hold, reinstall These commands are the same as install, but apply the named action to all packages given on the command line, unless specified otherwise. For instance, aptitude remove '~ndeity' will remove all packages whose name contains deity. markauto, unmarkauto Mark packages as automatically installed or manually installed, respectively. Packages are specified in exactly the same way as for the install command. For instance, aptitude markauto '~slibs' will mark all packages in the libs section as having been automatically installed. For more information on automatically installed packages, see the section Managing Automatically Installed Packages in the &aptitude; reference manual. forbid-version Forbid a package from being upgraded to a particular version. This will prevent aptitude from automatically upgrading to this version, but will allow automatic upgrades to future versions. By default, aptitude will select the version to which the package would normally be upgraded; you may override this selection by appending =version to the package name: for instance, aptitude forbid-version vim=1.2.3.broken-4. This command is useful for avoiding broken versions of packages without having to set and clear manual holds. If you decide you really want the forbidden version after all, the install command will remove the ban. update Updates the list of available packages from the &apt; sources (this is equivalent to apt-get update) upgrade Upgrades installed packages to their most recent version. Installed packages will not be removed unless they are unused (see the section Managing Automatically Installed Packages in the &aptitude; reference manual); packages which are not currently installed will not be installed. If a package cannot be upgraded without violating these constraints, it will be kept at its current version. forget-new Forgets all internal information about what packages are new (equivalent to pressing f when in visual mode). search Searches for packages matching one of the patterns supplied on the command line. All packages which match any of the given patterns will be displayed; for instance, aptitude search '~N' will list all new packages. For more information on search patterns, see the section Search Patterns in the &aptitude; reference manual. show Displays detailed information about one or more packages, listed following the search command. If a package name contains a tilde character (~), it will be treated as a search pattern and all matching packages will be displayed (see the section Search Patterns in the &aptitude; reference manual). clean Removes all previously downloaded .deb files from the package cache directory (usually /var/cache/apt/archives). autoclean Removes any cached packages which can no longer be downloaded. This allows you to prevent a cache from growing out of control over time without completely emptying it. changelog Downloads and displays the Debian changelog for each of the given packages. By default, the changelog for the version which would be installed with aptitude install is downloaded. You can select a particular version of a package by appending =version to the package name; you can select the version from a particular archive by appending /archive to the package name. download Downloads the .deb file for the given package to the current directory. By default, the version which would be installed with aptitude install is downloaded. You can select a particular version of a package by appending =version to the package name; you can select the version from a particular archive by appending /archive to the package name. help Displays a brief summary of the available commands and options. The following options may be used to modify the behavior of the actions described above. Note that while all options will be accepted for all commands, some options don't apply to particular commands and will be ignored by those commands. -D, --show-deps Show brief summaries of why packages will be automatically installed or removed. This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Deps. -d, --download-only Download packages to the package cache as necessary, but do not install or remove anything. This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Download-Only. -F format, --display-format format Specify the format which should be used to display output from the search command. For instance, passing %p %V %v for format will display a package's name, followed by its currently installed version and its available version (see the section Customizing how packages are displayed in the &aptitude; reference manual for more information). This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Format. -f Aggressively try to fix the dependencies of broken packages. This corresponds to the configuration item Aptitude::CmdLine::Fix-Broken. -h, --help Display a brief help message. Identical to the help action. -P, --prompt Always display a prompt, even when no actions other than those explicitly requested will be performed. This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt. -R, --without-recommends Do not treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages (this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and ~/.aptitude/config). This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::Recommends-Important -r, --with-recommends Treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages (this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and ~/.aptitude/config). This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::Recommends-Important -s, --simulate Print the actions that would normally be performed, but don't actually perform them. This does not require &root; privileges. This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Simulate. -t release, --target-release release Set the release from which packages should be installed. For instance, aptitude -t experimental ... will install packages from the experimental distribution unless you specify otherwise. This corresponds to the configuration item APT::Default-Release. -O order, --sort order Specify the order in which output from the search command should be displayed. For instance, passing installsize for order will list packages in order according to their size when installed (see the section Customizing how packages are sorted in the &aptitude; reference manual for more information). -o key=value Set a configuration file option directly; for instance, use -o Aptitude::Log=/tmp/my-log to log &aptitude;'s actions to /tmp/my-log. For more information on configuration file options, see the section Configuration file reference in the &aptitude; reference manual. -V, --show-versions Show which versions of packages will be installed. This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Versions. -v, --verbose Causes some commands (for instance, show) to display extra information. This may be supplied multiple times to get more and more information. This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Verbose. --version Display the version of &aptitude; and some information about how it was compiled. --visual-preview Instead of displaying the usual command-line prompt, start up the visual interface and display its preview screen. -w width, --width width Specify the display width which should be used for output from the search command (by default, the terminal width is used). This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Width -y, --assume-yes When a yes/no prompt would be presented, assume that the user entered yes. In particular, suppresses the prompt that appears when installing, upgrading, or removing packages. Prompts for dangerous actions, such as removing essential packages, will still be displayed. This option overrides -P. This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Assume-Yes. -Z Show how much disk space will be used or freed by the individual packages being installed, upgraded, or removed. This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Size-Changes. The following options apply to the visual mode of the program, but are primarily for internal use; you generally won't need to use them yourself. -S fname Loads the extended state information from fname instead of the standard state file. -u Begins updating the package lists as soon as the program starts. You cannot use this option and -i at the same time. -i Displays a download preview when the program starts (equivalent to starting the program and immediately pressing g). You cannot use this option and -u at the same time. apt-get8, apt8, /usr/share/doc/aptitude/html/index.html