APTITUDE(8)



APTITUDE(8)                 Command-line reference                 APTITUDE(8)

NAME
       aptitude - high-level interface to the package manager

SYNOPSIS
       aptitude [<options>...] {autoclean | clean | forget-new | keep-all |
                update}

       aptitude [<options>...] {full-upgrade | safe-upgrade} [<packages>...]

       aptitude [<options>...] {build-dep | build-depends | changelog |
                download | forbid-version | hold | install | markauto | purge
                | reinstall | remove | show | showsrc | source | unhold |
                unmarkauto | versions} <packages>...

       aptitude extract-cache-subset <output-directory> <packages>...

       aptitude [<options>...] search <patterns>...

       aptitude [<options>...] {add-user-tag | remove-user-tag} <tag>
                <packages>...

       aptitude [<options>...] {why | why-not} [<patterns>...] <package>

       aptitude [-S <fname>] [--autoclean-on-startup | --clean-on-startup | -i
                | -u]

       aptitude help

DESCRIPTION
       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.

COMMAND-LINE ACTIONS
       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
           ("~") or a question mark ("?"), 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". You cannot specify both an archive and a version
           for a package.

           Not every package listed on the command line has to be installed;
           you can tell aptitude to do something different with a package by
           appending an "override specifier" to the name of the package. For
           example, aptitude remove wesnoth+ will install wesnoth, not remove
           it. The following override specifiers are available:

           <package>+
               Install <package>.

               If the package was not installed, it is marked as manually
               installed, and the dependencies newly installed are marked with
               the automatic flag. If the package or the dependencies were
               already installed, the automatic flag is preserved. See the
               section about automatic installations in the documentation for
               more information.

           <package>+M
               Install <package> and immediately mark it as automatically
               installed (note that if nothing depends on <package>, this will
               cause it to be immediately removed).

           <package>-
               Remove <package>.

           <package>_
               Purge <package>: remove it and all its associated configuration
               and data files.

           <package>=
               Place <package> on hold: cancel any active installation,
               upgrade, or removal, and prevent this package from being
               automatically upgraded in the future.

           <package>:
               Keep <package> at its current version: cancel any installation,
               removal, or upgrade. Unlike "hold" (above) this does not
               prevent automatic upgrades in the future.

           <package>&M
               Mark <package> as having been automatically installed.

           <package>&m
               Mark <package> as having been manually installed.

           <package>&BD
               Install the build-dependencies of a <package>.

           As a special case, "install" with no arguments will act on any
           stored/pending actions.

               Note
               Once you enter Y at the final confirmation prompt, 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" on packages previously
               uninstalled, and then the installation fails once aptitude has
               started downloading and installing packages, you will need to
               run "aptitude remove foo bar" to go back to the previous state
               (and possibly undo installations or upgrades to other packages
               that were affected by the "install" action).

       remove, purge, reinstall
           These commands are the same as "install", but apply the named
           action to all packages given on the command line for which it is
           not overridden.

           For instance, "aptitude remove '~ndeity'" will remove all packages
           whose name contains "deity".

       build-depends, build-dep
           Satisfy the build-dependencies of a package. Each package name may
           be a source package, in which case the build dependencies of that
           source package are installed; otherwise, binary packages are found
           in the same way as for the "install" command, and the
           build-dependencies of the source packages that build those binary
           packages are satisfied.

           If the command-line parameter --arch-only is present, only
           architecture-dependent build dependencies (i.e., not
           Build-Depends-Indep or Build-Conflicts-Indep) will be obeyed.

       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.

       hold, unhold, keep
           Mark packages to be on hold, remove this property, or set to keep
           in the current state. Packages are specified in exactly the same
           way as for the "install" command. For instance, "aptitude hold
           '~e^dpkg$'" will mark all packages coming from the source package
           "dpkg" to be on hold.

           The difference between hold and keep is that hold will cause a
           package to be ignored by future safe-upgrade or full-upgrade
           commands, while keep merely cancels any scheduled actions on the
           package.  unhold will allow a package to be upgraded by future
           safe-upgrade or full-upgrade commands, without otherwise altering
           its state.

       keep-all
           Cancels all scheduled actions on all packages; any packages whose
           sticky state indicates an installation, removal, or upgrade will
           have this sticky state cleared.

       forget-new
           Forgets all internal information about what packages are "new"
           (equivalent to pressing "f" when in visual mode).

           This command accepts package names or patterns as arguments. If the
           string contains a tilde character ("~") or a question mark ("?"),
           it will be treated as a search pattern and every package matching
           the pattern will be considered (see the section "Search Patterns"
           in the aptitude reference manual).

       forbid-version
           Forbid a package from being upgraded to a particular version, while
           allowing automatic upgrades to future versions. This is useful for
           example to avoid a known broken version of a package, without
           having to set and clear manual holds.

           By default, aptitude will select the forbidden version to be the
           one which the package would normally be upgraded (the candidate
           version). This may be overridden by appending "=<version>" to the
           package name: for instance, "aptitude forbid-version
           vim=1.2.3.broken-4".

           To revert the action, "aptitude install <package>" will remove the
           ban. To remove the forbidden version without installing the
           candidate version, the current version should be appended: "install
           <package>=<version>".

       update
           Updates the list of available packages from the apt sources (this
           is equivalent to "apt-get update")

       safe-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 may
           be installed to resolve dependencies unless the --no-new-installs
           command-line option is supplied.

           If no <package>s are listed on the command line, aptitude will
           attempt to upgrade every package that can be upgraded. Otherwise,
           aptitude will attempt to upgrade only the packages which it is
           instructed to upgrade. The <package>s can be extended with suffixes
           in the same manner as arguments to aptitude install, so you can
           also give additional instructions to aptitude here; for instance,
           aptitude safe-upgrade bash dash- will attempt to upgrade the bash
           package and remove the dash package.

           It is sometimes necessary to remove one package in order to upgrade
           another; this command is not able to upgrade packages in such
           situations. Use the full-upgrade command to upgrade as many
           packages as possible.

       full-upgrade
           Upgrades installed packages to their most recent version, removing
           or installing packages as necessary. It also installs new Essential
           or Required packages. This command is less conservative than
           safe-upgrade and thus more likely to perform unwanted actions.
           However, it is capable of upgrading packages that safe-upgrade
           cannot upgrade.

           If no <package>s are listed on the command line, aptitude will
           attempt to upgrade every package that can be upgraded. Otherwise,
           aptitude will attempt to upgrade only the packages which it is
           instructed to upgrade. The <package>s can be extended with suffixes
           in the same manner as arguments to aptitude install, so you can
           also give additional instructions to aptitude here; for instance,
           aptitude full-upgrade bash dash- will attempt to upgrade the bash
           package and remove the dash package.

               Note
               This command was originally named dist-upgrade for historical
               reasons, and aptitude still recognizes dist-upgrade as a
               synonym for full-upgrade.

       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' edit" will
           list all "new" packages and all packages whose name contains
           "edit". For more information on search patterns, see the section
           "Search Patterns" in the aptitude reference manual.

               Note
               In the example above, "aptitude search '~N' edit" has two
               arguments after search and thus is searching for two patterns:
               "~N" and "edit". As described in the search pattern reference,
               a single pattern composed of two sub-patterns separated by a
               space (such as "~N edit") matches only if both patterns match.
               Thus, the command "aptitude search '~N edit'" will only show
               "new" packages whose name contains "edit".
           Unless you pass the -F option, the output of aptitude search will
           look something like this:

               i   apt                             - Advanced front-end for dpkg
               pi  apt-build                       - frontend to apt to build, optimize and in
               cp  apt-file                        - APT package searching utility -- command-
               ihA raptor-utils                    - Raptor RDF Parser utilities

           Each search result is listed on a separate line. The first
           character of each line indicates the current state of the package:
           the most common states are p, meaning that no trace of the package
           exists on the system, c, meaning that the package was deleted but
           its configuration files remain on the system, i, meaning that the
           package is installed, and v, meaning that the package is virtual.
           The second character indicates the stored action (if any; otherwise
           a blank space is displayed) to be performed on the package, with
           the most common actions being i, meaning that the package will be
           installed, d, meaning that the package will be deleted, and p,
           meaning that the package and its configuration files will be
           removed. If the third character is A, the package was automatically
           installed.

           For a complete list of the possible state and action flags, see the
           section "Accessing Package Information" in the aptitude reference
           guide. To customize the output of search, see the command-line
           options -F and --sort.

       show
           Displays detailed information about one or more packages. If a
           package name contains a tilde character ("~") or a question mark
           ("?"), 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).

           If the verbosity level is 1 or greater (i.e., at least one -v is
           present on the command-line), information about all versions of the
           package is displayed. Otherwise, information about the "candidate
           version" (the version that "aptitude install" would download) is
           displayed.

           You can display information about a different version of the
           package by appending =<version> to the package name; you can
           display the version from a particular archive or release by
           appending /<archive> or /<release> to the package name: for
           instance, /unstable or /sid. If either of these is present, then
           only the version you request will be displayed, regardless of the
           verbosity level.

           If the verbosity level is 1 or greater, the package's architecture,
           compressed size, filename, and md5sum fields will be displayed. If
           the verbosity level is 2 or greater, the select version or versions
           will be displayed once for each archive in which they are found.

       showsrc
           Displays detailed information about one or more source packages.

           This is a thin wrapper over apt(8).

       source
           Downloads one or more source packages.

           This is a thin wrapper over apt(8).

       versions
           Displays the versions of the packages listed on the command-line.

               $ aptitude versions wesnoth
               p   1:1.4.5-1                                                             100
               p   1:1.6.5-1                                    unstable                 500
               p   1:1.7.14-1                                   experimental             1

           Each version is listed on a separate line. The leftmost three
           characters indicate the current state, planned state (if any), and
           whether the package was automatically installed; for more
           information on their meanings, see the documentation of aptitude
           search. To the right of the version number you can find the
           releases from which the version is available, and the pin priority
           of the version.

           If a package name contains a tilde character ("~") or a question
           mark ("?"), it will be treated as a search pattern and all matching
           versions will be displayed (see the section "Search Patterns" in
           the aptitude reference manual). This means that, for instance,
           aptitude versions '~i' will display all the versions that are
           currently installed on the system and nothing else, not even other
           versions of the same packages.

               $ aptitude versions '~nexim4-daemon-light'
               Package exim4-daemon-light:
               i   4.71-3                                                                100
               p   4.71-4                                       unstable                 500

               Package exim4-daemon-light-dbg:
               p   4.71-4                                       unstable                 500

           If the input is a search pattern, or if more than one package's
           versions are to be displayed, aptitude will automatically group the
           output by package, as shown above. You can disable this via
           --group-by=none, in which case aptitude will display a single list
           of all the versions that were found and automatically include the
           package name in each output line:

               $ aptitude versions --group-by=none '~nexim4-daemon-light'
               i   exim4-daemon-light 4.71-3                                             100
               p   exim4-daemon-light 4.71-4                    unstable                 500
               p   exim4-daemon-light-dbg 4.71-4                unstable                 500

           To disable the package name, pass --show-package-names=never:

               $ aptitude versions --show-package-names=never --group-by=none '~nexim4-daemon-light'
               i   4.71-3                                                                100
               p   4.71-4                                       unstable                 500
               p   4.71-4                                       unstable                 500

           In addition to the above options, the information printed for each
           version can be controlled by the command-line option -F. The order
           in which versions are displayed can be controlled by the
           command-line option --sort. To prevent aptitude from formatting the
           output into columns, use --disable-columns.

       add-user-tag, remove-user-tag
           Adds a user tag to or removes a user tag from the selected group of
           packages. If a package name contains a tilde ("~") or question mark
           ("?"), it is treated as a search pattern and the tag is added to or
           removed from all the packages that match the pattern (see the
           section "Search Patterns" in the aptitude reference manual).

           User tags are arbitrary strings associated with a package. They can
           be used with the ?user-tag(<tag>) search term, which will select
           all the packages that have a user tag matching <tag>.

       why, why-not
           Explains the reason that a particular package should or cannot be
           installed on the system.

           This command searches for packages that require or conflict with
           the given package. It displays a sequence of dependencies leading
           to the target package, along with a note indicating the installed
           state of each package in the dependency chain:

               $ aptitude why kdepim
               i   nautilus-data Recommends nautilus
               i A nautilus      Recommends desktop-base (>= 0.2)
               i A desktop-base  Suggests   gnome | kde | xfce4 | wmaker
               p   kde           Depends    kdepim (>= 4:3.4.3)

           The command why finds a dependency chain that installs the package
           named on the command line, as above. Note that the dependency that
           aptitude produced in this case is only a suggestion. This is
           because no package currently installed on this computer depends on
           or recommends the kdepim package; if a stronger dependency were
           available, aptitude would have displayed it.

           In contrast, why-not finds a dependency chain leading to a conflict
           with the target package:

               $ aptitude why-not textopo
               i   ocaml-core          Depends   ocamlweb
               i A ocamlweb            Depends   tetex-extra | texlive-latex-extra
               i A texlive-latex-extra Conflicts textopo

           If one or more <pattern>s are present (in addition to the mandatory
           last argument, which should be a valid <package> name), then
           aptitude will begin its search at these patterns. That is, the
           first package in the chain it prints to explain why <package> is or
           is not installed, will be a package matching the pattern in
           question. The patterns are considered to be package names unless
           they contain a tilde character ("~") or a question mark ("?"), in
           which case they are treated as search patterns (see the section
           "Search Patterns" in the aptitude reference manual).

           If no patterns are present, then aptitude will search for
           dependency chains beginning at manually installed packages. This
           effectively shows the packages that have caused or would cause a
           given package to be installed.

               Note
               aptitude why does not perform full dependency resolution; it
               only displays direct relationships between packages. For
               instance, if A requires B, C requires D, and B and C conflict,
               "aptitude why-not D" will not produce the answer "A depends on
               B, B conflicts with C, and D depends on C".
           By default aptitude outputs only the "most installed, strongest,
           tightest, shortest" dependency chain. That is, it looks for a chain
           that only contains packages which are installed or will be
           installed; it looks for the strongest possible dependencies under
           that restriction; it looks for chains that avoid ORed dependencies
           and Provides; and it looks for the shortest dependency chain
           meeting those criteria. These rules are progressively weakened
           until a match is found.

           If the verbosity level is 1 or more, then all the explanations
           aptitude can find will be displayed, in inverse order of relevance.
           If the verbosity level is 2 or more, a truly excessive amount of
           debugging information will be printed to standard output.

           This command returns 0 if successful, 1 if no explanation could be
           constructed, and -1 if an error occurred.

       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
           source or binary 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 or release by
           appending /<archive> or /<release> to the package name (for
           instance, /unstable or /sid).

       download
           Downloads the .deb file for the given package to the current
           directory.

           This is a thin wrapper over apt(8).

       extract-cache-subset
           Copy the apt configuration directory (/etc/apt) and a subset of the
           package database to the specified directory. If no packages are
           listed, the entire package database is copied; otherwise only the
           entries corresponding to the named packages are copied. Each
           package name may be a search pattern, and all the packages matching
           that pattern will be selected (see the section "Search Patterns" in
           the aptitude reference manual). Any existing package database files
           in the output directory will be overwritten.

           Dependencies in binary package stanzas will be rewritten to remove
           references to packages not in the selected set.

       help
           Displays a brief summary of the available commands and options.

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.

       --add-user-tag <tag>
           For full-upgrade, safe-upgrade, forbid-version, hold, install,
           keep-all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold,
           and unmarkauto: add the user tag <tag> to all packages that are
           installed, removed, or upgraded by this command as if with the
           add-user-tag command.

       --add-user-tag-to <tag>,<pattern>
           For full-upgrade, safe-upgrade, forbid-version, hold, install,
           keep-all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold,
           and unmarkauto: add the user tag <tag> to all packages that match
           <pattern> as if with the add-user-tag command. The pattern is a
           search pattern as described in the section "Search Patterns" in the
           aptitude reference manual.

           For instance, aptitude safe-upgrade --add-user-tag-to
           "new-installs,?action(install)" will add the tag new-installs to
           all the packages installed by the safe-upgrade command.

       --allow-new-upgrades
           When the safe resolver is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver was
           passed, the action is safe-upgrade, or
           Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver is set to true), allow the
           dependency resolver to install upgrades for packages regardless of
           the value of Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Upgrades.

       --allow-new-installs
           Allow the safe-upgrade command to install new packages; when the
           safe resolver is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver was passed, the
           action is safe-upgrade, or Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver is
           set to true), allow the dependency resolver to install new
           packages. This option takes effect regardless of the value of
           Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Installs.

       --allow-untrusted
           Install packages from untrusted sources without prompting. You
           should only use this if you know what you are doing, as it could
           easily compromise your system's security.

       --disable-columns
           This option causes aptitude search and aptitude versions to output
           their results without any special formatting. In particular:
           normally aptitude will add whitespace or truncate search results in
           an attempt to fit its results into vertical "columns". With this
           flag, each line will be formed by replacing any format escapes in
           the format string with the corresponding text; column widths will
           be ignored.

           For instance, the first few lines of output from "aptitude search
           -F '%p %V' --disable-columns libedataserver" might be:

               disksearch 1.2.1-3
               hp-search-mac 0.1.3
               libbsearch-ruby 1.5-5
               libbsearch-ruby1.8 1.5-5
               libclass-dbi-abstractsearch-perl 0.07-2
               libdbix-fulltextsearch-perl 0.73-10

           As in the above example, --disable-columns is often useful in
           combination with a custom display format set using the command-line
           option -F.

           This corresponds to the configuration option
           Aptitude::CmdLine::Disable-Columns.

       -D, --show-deps
           For commands that will install or remove packages (install,
           full-upgrade, etc), show brief explanations of automatic
           installations and removals.

           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. By default, the package cache is stored
           in /var/cache/apt/archives.

           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 and versions commands. For instance, passing "%p %v %V" for
           <format> will display a package's name, followed by its currently
           installed version and its candidate version (see the section
           "Customizing how packages are displayed" in the aptitude reference
           manual for more information).

           The command-line option --disable-columns is often useful in
           combination with -F.

           For search, this corresponds to the configuration option
           Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Format; for versions, this
           corresponds to the configuration option
           Aptitude::CmdLine::Version-Display-Format.

       -f
           Try hard to fix the dependencies of broken packages, even if it
           means ignoring the actions requested on the command line.

           This corresponds to the configuration item
           Aptitude::CmdLine::Fix-Broken.

       --full-resolver
           When package dependency problems are encountered, use the default
           "full" resolver to solve them. Unlike the "safe" resolver activated
           by --safe-resolver, the full resolver will happily remove packages
           to fulfill dependencies. It can resolve more situations than the
           safe algorithm, but its solutions are more likely to be
           undesirable.

           This option can be used to force the use of the full resolver even
           when Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver is true.

       --group-by <grouping-mode>
           Control how the versions command groups its output. The following
           values are recognized:

           o   archive to group packages by the archive they occur in
               ("stable", "unstable", etc). If a package occurs in several
               archives, it will be displayed in each of them.

           o   auto to group versions by their package unless there is exactly
               one argument and it is not a search pattern.

           o   none to display all the versions in a single list without any
               grouping.

           o   package to group versions by their package.

           o   source-package to group versions by their source package.

           o   source-version to group versions by their source package and
               source version.

           This corresponds to the configuration option
           Aptitude::CmdLine::Versions-Group-By.

       -h, --help
           Display a brief help message. Identical to the help action.

       --log-file=<file>
           If <file> is a nonempty string, log messages will be written to it,
           except that if <file> is "-", the messages will be written to
           standard output instead. If this option appears multiple times, the
           last occurrence is the one that will take effect.

           This does not affect the log of installations that aptitude has
           performed (/var/log/aptitude); the log messages written using this
           configuration include internal program events, errors, and
           debugging messages. See the command-line option --log-level to get
           more control over what gets logged.

           This corresponds to the configuration option
           Aptitude::Logging::File.

       --log-level=<level>, --log-level=<category>:<level>
           --log-level=<level> causes aptitude to only log messages whose
           level is <level> or higher. For instance, setting the log level to
           error will cause only messages at the log levels error and fatal to
           be displayed; all others will be hidden. Valid log levels (in
           descending order) are off, fatal, error, warn, info, debug, and
           trace. The default log level is warn.

           --log-level=<category>:<level> causes messages in <category> to
           only be logged if their level is <level> or higher.

           --log-level may appear multiple times on the command line; the most
           specific setting is the one that takes effect, so if you pass
           --log-level=aptitude.resolver:fatal and
           --log-level=aptitude.resolver.hints.match:trace, then messages in
           aptitude.resolver.hints.parse will only be printed if their level
           is fatal, but all messages in aptitude.resolver.hints.match will be
           printed. If you set the level of the same category two or more
           times, the last setting is the one that will take effect.

           This does not affect the log of installations that aptitude has
           performed (/var/log/aptitude); the log messages written using this
           configuration include internal program events, errors, and
           debugging messages. See the command-line option --log-file to
           change where log messages go.

           This corresponds to the configuration group
           Aptitude::Logging::Levels.

       --log-resolver
           Set some standard log levels related to the resolver, to produce
           logging output suitable for processing with automated tools. This
           is equivalent to the command-line options
           --log-level=aptitude.resolver.search:trace
           --log-level=aptitude.resolver.search.tiers:info.

       --no-new-installs
           Prevent safe-upgrade from installing any new packages; when the
           safe resolver is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver was passed or
           Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver is set to true), forbid the
           dependency resolver from installing new packages. This option takes
           effect regardless of the value of
           Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Installs.

           This mimics the historical behavior of apt-get upgrade.

       --no-new-upgrades
           When the safe resolver is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver was
           passed or Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver is set to true),
           forbid the dependency resolver from installing upgrades for
           packages regardless of the value of
           Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Upgrades.

       --no-show-resolver-actions
           Do not display the actions performed by the "safe" resolver,
           overriding any configuration option or earlier
           --show-resolver-actions.

       -O <order>, --sort <order>
           Specify the order in which output from the search and versions
           commands 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).

           Prepending the order keyword with a tilde character (~) reverses
           the order from ascending to descending.

           The default sort order is name,version.

       -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.

       -P, --prompt
           Always display a prompt before downloading, installing or removing
           packages, even when no actions other than those explicitly
           requested will be performed.

           This corresponds to the configuration option
           Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt.

       --purge-unused
           If Aptitude::Delete-Unused is set to "true" (its default), then in
           addition to removing each package that is no longer required by any
           installed package, aptitude will also purge them, removing their
           configuration files and perhaps other important data. For more
           information about which packages are considered to be "unused", see
           the section "Managing Automatically Installed Packages" in the
           aptitude reference manual.  THIS OPTION CAN CAUSE DATA LOSS! DO NOT
           USE IT UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!

           This corresponds to the configuration option
           Aptitude::Purge-Unused.

       -q[=<n>], --quiet[=<n>]
           Suppress all incremental progress indicators, thus making the
           output loggable. This may be supplied multiple times to make the
           program quieter, but unlike apt-get, aptitude does not enable -y
           when -q is supplied more than once.

           The optional =<n> may be used to directly set the amount of
           quietness (for instance, to override a setting in
           /etc/apt/apt.conf); it causes the program to behave as if -q had
           been passed exactly <n> times.

       -R, --without-recommends
           Do not treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new
           packages (this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and
           ~/.aptitude/config). Packages previously installed due to
           recommendations will not be removed.

           This corresponds to the pair of configuration options
           APT::Install-Recommends and APT::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant.

       -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
           APT::Install-Recommends

       --remove-user-tag <tag>
           For full-upgrade, safe-upgrade forbid-version, hold, install,
           keep-all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold,
           and unmarkauto: remove the user tag <tag> from all packages that
           are installed, removed, or upgraded by this command as if with the
           add-user-tag command.

       --remove-user-tag-from <tag>,<pattern>
           For full-upgrade, safe-upgrade forbid-version, hold, install,
           keep-all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold,
           and unmarkauto: remove the user tag <tag> from all packages that
           match <pattern> as if with the remove-user-tag command. The pattern
           is a search pattern as described in the section "Search Patterns"
           in the aptitude reference manual.

           For instance, aptitude safe-upgrade --remove-user-tag-from
           "not-upgraded,?action(upgrade)" will remove the not-upgraded tag
           from all packages that the safe-upgrade command is able to upgrade.

       -s, --simulate
           In command-line mode, print the actions that would normally be
           performed, but don't actually perform them. This does not require
           root privileges. In the visual interface, always open the cache in
           read-only mode regardless of whether you are root.

           This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::Simulate.

       --safe-resolver
           When package dependency problems are encountered, use a "safe"
           algorithm to solve them. This resolver attempts to preserve as many
           of your choices as possible; it will never remove a package or
           install a version of a package other than the package's default
           candidate version. It is the same algorithm used in safe-upgrade;
           indeed, aptitude --safe-resolver full-upgrade is equivalent to
           aptitude safe-upgrade. Because safe-upgrade always uses the safe
           resolver, it does not accept the --safe-resolver flag.

           This option is equivalent to setting the configuration variable
           Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver to true.

       --schedule-only
           For commands that modify package states, schedule operations to be
           performed in the future, but don't perform them. You can execute
           scheduled actions by running aptitude install with no arguments.
           This is equivalent to making the corresponding selections in visual
           mode, then exiting the program normally.

           For instance, aptitude --schedule-only install evolution will
           schedule the evolution package for later installation.

       --show-package-names <when>
           Controls when the versions command shows package names. The
           following settings are allowed:

           o   always: display package names every time that aptitude versions
               runs.

           o   auto: display package names when aptitude versions runs if the
               output is not grouped by package, and either there is a
               pattern-matching argument or there is more than one argument.

           o   never: never display package names in the output of aptitude
               versions.

           This option corresponds to the configuration item
           Aptitude::CmdLine::Versions-Show-Package-Names.

       --show-resolver-actions
           Display the actions performed by the "safe" resolver and by
           safe-upgrade.

           When executing the command safe-upgrade or when the option
           --safe-resolver is present, aptitude will display a summary of the
           actions performed by the resolver before printing the installation
           preview. This is equivalent to the configuration option
           Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::Show-Resolver-Actions.

       --show-summary[=<MODE>]
           Changes the behavior of "aptitude why" to summarize each dependency
           chain that it outputs, rather than displaying it in long form. If
           this option is present and <MODE> is not "no-summary", chains that
           contain Suggests dependencies will not be displayed: combine
           --show-summary with -v to see a summary of all the reasons for the
           target package to be installed.

           <MODE> can be any one of the following:

            1. no-summary: don't show a summary (the default behavior if
               --show-summary is not present).

            2. first-package: display the first package in each chain. This is
               the default value of <MODE> if it is not present.

            3. first-package-and-type: display the first package in each
               chain, along with the strength of the weakest dependency in the
               chain.

            4. all-packages: briefly display each chain of dependencies
               leading to the target package.

            5. all-packages-with-dep-versions: briefly display each chain of
               dependencies leading to the target package, including the
               target version of each dependency.

           This option corresponds to the configuration item
           Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Summary; if --show-summary is present on
           the command-line, it will override Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Summary.

           Example 12. Usage of --show-summary --show-summary used with -v to
           display all the reasons a package is installed:

               $ aptitude -v --show-summary why foomatic-db
               Packages requiring foomatic-db:
                 cupsys-driver-gutenprint
                 foomatic-db-engine
                 foomatic-db-gutenprint
                 foomatic-db-hpijs
                 foomatic-filters-ppds
                 foomatic-gui
                 kde
                 printconf
                 wine

               $ aptitude -v --show-summary=first-package-and-type why foomatic-db
               Packages requiring foomatic-db:
                 [Depends] cupsys-driver-gutenprint
                 [Depends] foomatic-db-engine
                 [Depends] foomatic-db-gutenprint
                 [Depends] foomatic-db-hpijs
                 [Depends] foomatic-filters-ppds
                 [Depends] foomatic-gui
                 [Depends] kde
                 [Depends] printconf
                 [Depends] wine

               $ aptitude -v --show-summary=all-packages why foomatic-db
               Packages requiring foomatic-db:
                 cupsys-driver-gutenprint D: cups-driver-gutenprint D: cups R: foomatic-filters R: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
                 foomatic-filters-ppds D: foomatic-filters R: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
                 kde D: kdeadmin R: system-config-printer-kde D: system-config-printer R: hal-cups-utils D: cups R: foomatic-filters R: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
                 wine D: libwine-print D: cups-bsd R: cups R: foomatic-filters R: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
                 foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
                 foomatic-db-gutenprint D: foomatic-db
                 foomatic-db-hpijs D: foomatic-db
                 foomatic-gui D: python-foomatic D: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
                 printconf D: foomatic-db

               $ aptitude -v --show-summary=all-packages-with-dep-versions why foomatic-db
               Packages requiring foomatic-db:
                 cupsys-driver-gutenprint D: cups-driver-gutenprint (>= 5.0.2-4) D: cups (>= 1.3.0) R: foomatic-filters (>= 4.0) R: foomatic-db-engine (>= 4.0) D: foomatic-db (>= 20090301)
                 foomatic-filters-ppds D: foomatic-filters R: foomatic-db-engine (>= 4.0) D: foomatic-db (>= 20090301)
                 kde D: kdeadmin (>= 4:3.5.5) R: system-config-printer-kde (>= 4:4.2.2-1) D: system-config-printer (>= 1.0.0) R: hal-cups-utils D: cups R: foomatic-filters (>= 4.0) R: foomatic-db-engine (>= 4.0) D: foomatic-db (>= 20090301)
                 wine D: libwine-print (= 1.1.15-1) D: cups-bsd R: cups R: foomatic-filters (>= 4.0) R: foomatic-db-engine (>= 4.0) D: foomatic-db (>= 20090301)
                 foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
                 foomatic-db-gutenprint D: foomatic-db
                 foomatic-db-hpijs D: foomatic-db
                 foomatic-gui D: python-foomatic (>= 0.7.9.2) D: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db (>= 20090301)
                 printconf D: foomatic-db

           --show-summary used to list a chain on one line:

               $ aptitude --show-summary=all-packages why aptitude-gtk libglib2.0-data
               Packages requiring libglib2.0-data:
                 aptitude-gtk D: libglib2.0-0 R: libglib2.0-data

       -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 will affect the default candidate version of packages
           according to the rules described in apt_preferences(5).

           This corresponds to the configuration item APT::Default-Release.

       -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
           When installing or removing packages from the command line, instead
           of displaying the usual prompt, start up the visual interface and
           display its preview screen.

       -W, --show-why
           In the preview displayed before packages are installed or removed,
           show which manually installed package requires each automatically
           installed package. For instance:

               $ aptitude --show-why install mediawiki
               ...
               The following NEW packages will be installed:
                 libapache2-mod-php5{a} (for mediawiki)  mediawiki  php5{a} (for mediawiki)
                 php5-cli{a} (for mediawiki)  php5-common{a} (for mediawiki)
                 php5-mysql{a} (for mediawiki)

           When combined with -v or a non-zero value for
           Aptitude::CmdLine::Verbose, this displays the entire chain of
           dependencies that lead each package to be installed. For instance:

               $ aptitude -v --show-why install libdb4.2-dev
               The following NEW packages will be installed:
                 libdb4.2{a} (libdb4.2-dev D: libdb4.2)  libdb4.2-dev
               The following packages will be REMOVED:
                 libdb4.4-dev{a} (libdb4.2-dev C: libdb-dev P<- libdb-dev)

           This option will also describe why packages are being removed, as
           shown above. In this example, libdb4.2-dev conflicts with
           libdb-dev, which is provided by libdb-dev.

           This argument corresponds to the configuration option
           Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Why and displays the same information that
           is computed by aptitude why and aptitude why-not.

       -w <width>, --width <width>
           Specify the display width which should be used for output from the
           search and versions commands (in the command line).

           By default and when the output is seen directly in a terminal, the
           terminal width is used. When the output is redirected or piped, a
           very large "unlimited" line width is used, and this option is
           ignored.

           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.

       --autoclean-on-startup
           Deletes old downloaded files when the program starts (equivalent to
           starting the program and immediately selecting Actions -> Clean
           obsolete files). You cannot use this option and
           "--clean-on-startup", "-i", or "-u" at the same time.

       --clean-on-startup
           Cleans the package cache when the program starts (equivalent to
           starting the program and immediately selecting Actions -> Clean
           package cache). You cannot use this option and
           "--autoclean-on-startup", "-i", or "-u" 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 "--autoclean-on-startup", "--clean-on-startup", or
           "-u" at the same time.

       -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 "--autoclean-on-startup",
           "--clean-on-startup", or "-i" at the same time.

ENVIRONMENT
       HOME
           If $HOME/.aptitude exists, aptitude will store its configuration
           file in $HOME/.aptitude/config. Otherwise, it will look up the
           current user's home directory using getpwuid(2) and place its
           configuration file there.

       PAGER
           If this environment variable is set, aptitude will use it to
           display changelogs when "aptitude changelog" is invoked. If not
           set, it defaults to more.

       TMP
           If TMPDIR is unset, aptitude will store its temporary files in TMP
           if that variable is set. Otherwise, it will store them in /tmp.

       TMPDIR
           aptitude will store its temporary files in the directory indicated
           by this environment variable. If TMPDIR is not set, then TMP will
           be used; if TMP is also unset, then aptitude will use /tmp.

FILES
       /var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates
           The file in which stored package states and some package flags are
           stored.

       /etc/apt/apt.conf, /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/*, ~/.aptitude/config
           The configuration files for aptitude.  ~/.aptitude/config overrides
           /etc/apt/apt.conf. See apt.conf(5) for documentation of the format
           and contents of these files.

SEE ALSO
       apt-get(8), apt(8), /usr/share/doc/aptitude/html/<lang>/index.html from
       the package aptitude-doc-<lang>

AUTHORS
       Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org>
           Main author of the document.

       Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <mafm@debian.org>
           Main maintainer after Daniel Burrows, documentation about new
           features, corrections and formatting.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 2004-2011 Daniel Burrows.

       Copyright 2014-2016 Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo

       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 program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
       51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

aptitude 0.8.13                   05/21/2020                       APTITUDE(8)

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