                             aptitude user's manual

Version 0.8.13

  Daniel Burrows

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

  Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo

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

Copyright © 2004-2011, 2012-2016 Daniel Burrows, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo

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

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Table of Contents

Introduction

             What is this aptitude thing, anyway?

             What is a package manager?

             What is the apt system?

             How can I get aptitude?

                          Pre-built aptitude packages, or, “what 99% of users
                          should do”

                          Building aptitude from source code

                          Tracking and participating in aptitude development

1. Getting started

             Using aptitude

                          aptitude basics

                          Navigating the aptitude package list

                          Finding packages by name

                          Managing packages

                          Updating the package list and installing packages

             Using aptitude from the command line

2. aptitude reference guide

             The aptitude terminal user interface

                          Using the menus

                          Menu commands

                          Working with multiple views

                          Becoming root

             Managing packages

                          Managing the package list

                          Accessing package information

                          Modifying package states

                          Downloading, installing, and removing packages

                          Understanding and managing package trust

                          Managing automatically installed packages

             Resolving package dependencies

                          Dependency resolution in aptitude

                          Immediate dependency resolution

                          Resolving Dependencies Interactively

                          Costs in the interactive dependency resolver

                          Configuring the interactive dependency resolver

             Search patterns

                          Searching for strings

                          Shorthand for search terms

                          Searches and versions

                          Explicit search targets

                          Search term reference

             Customizing aptitude

                          Customizing the package list

                          Customizing keybindings

                          Customizing text colors and styles

                          Customizing the display layout

                          Configuration file reference

                          Themes

             Playing Minesweeper

3. aptitude frequently asked questions

4. Credits

I. Command-line reference

             aptitude — high-level interface to the package manager

             aptitude-create-state-bundle — bundle the current aptitude state

             aptitude-run-state-bundle — unpack an aptitude state bundle and
             invoke aptitude on it

List of Figures

2.1. Commands available in the Actions menu

2.2. Commands available in the Undo menu

2.3. Commands available in the Package menu

2.4. Commands available in the Resolver menu

2.5. Commands available in the Search menu

2.6. Commands available in the Options menu

2.7. Commands available in the Views menu

2.8. Commands available in the Help menu

2.9. Values of the “current state” flag

2.10. Values of the “action” flag

2.11. Syntax of compound cost components

2.12. Safety cost levels

2.13. Syntax of the ?for term

2.14. Customizable styles in aptitude

List of Tables

2.1. Basic cost components

2.2. Default safety cost levels

2.3. Quick guide to search terms

List of Examples

2.1. Sample resolver costs

2.2. Use of the ?= term.

2.3. Use of the ?bind term

2.4. Use of the ?exact-name term

2.5. Use of the ?for term

2.6. Use of the ?term-prefix term

2.7. Grouping policy firstchar or firstchar(binary)

2.8. Grouping policy firstchar(source)

2.9. Use of pattern to group packages by their maintainer

2.10. Use of pattern with some packages placed at the top level

2.11. Use of the pattern grouping policy with sub-policies

12. Usage of --show-summary

                                  Introduction

Table of Contents

What is this aptitude thing, anyway?

What is a package manager?

What is the apt system?

How can I get aptitude?

             Pre-built aptitude packages, or, “what 99% of users should do”

             Building aptitude from source code

             Tracking and participating in aptitude development

  “Master, does Emacs possess the Buddha nature?” the novice asked.             

  “I don't see why not,” replied the master. “It's got bloody well everything
  else.” Several years later, the novice suddenly achieved enlightenment.
                                                                   -- John Fouhy

Hello, and welcome to the aptitude user's manual! This introductory section
explains what aptitude is and how to get your hands on it; for information on
actually using it, please proceed to Chapter 1, Getting started.

What is this aptitude thing, anyway?

aptitude is a featureful package manager for Debian GNU/Linux systems, based on
the renowned apt package management infrastructure. aptitude provides the
functionality of dselect and apt-get, as well as many additional features not
found in either program.

What is a package manager?

A package manager keeps track of what software is installed on your computer,
and allows you to easily install new software, upgrade software to newer
versions, or remove software that you previously installed. As the name
suggests, package managers deal with packages: collections of files that are
bundled together and can be installed and removed as a group.

Often, a package is just a particular program. For instance, the instant
messaging client gaim is contained in the Debian package of the same name. On
the other hand, it is common for programs to consist of several interrelated
packages. For instance, the gimp image editor consists not only of the gimp
package, but also of the gimp-data package; in addition, several optional add-on
packages (containing esoteric data, documentation, and so on) are also
available. It is also possible for several small, related programs to be
contained in a single package: for instance, the fileutils package contains
several common Unix commands, such as ls, cp, etc.

Some packages require other packages in order to function. In Debian, packages
can depend upon, recommend, suggest, break, or conflict with other packages.

  • If a package A depends upon another package B, then B is required for A to
    operate properly. For instance, the gimp package depends upon the gimp-data
    package in order to ensure that the GIMP graphics editor can access its
    critical data files.

  • If a package A recommends another package B, then B provides important
    additional functionality to A that will be desired in most circumstances.
    For instance, the mozilla-browser package recommends the mozilla-psm
    package, which adds support for secure data transfers to the Mozilla Web
    browser. While mozilla-psm is not strictly required for Mozilla to function,
    most users will want Mozilla to support the secure transmission of
    confidential data (such as credit card numbers).

  • If a package A suggests another package B, then package B provides
    functionality that may enhance A, but is not needed in most cases. For
    instance, the kmail package suggests the gnupg package, which contains
    encryption software that can be used by KMail.

  • If a package A conflicts with another package B, then the two packages
    cannot be installed at the same time. For instance, fb-music-hi conflicts
    with fb-music-low because they provide alternate sets of music for the game
    Frozen Bubble.

The job of a package manager is to present an interface which assists the user
in managing the collection of packages installed on his or her system. aptitude
provides such an interface by building on the apt package management system.

What is the apt system?

Being able to install and remove packages is great, but the basic software for
doing this (known as dpkg) does exactly that and nothing more. This is fine if
you download one or two packages by hand, but quickly becomes cumbersome when
you are trying to manage a large number of packages. Furthermore, if your shiny
new package requires software you haven't yet installed, you have to download
the newly required software by hand. And if you later decide to remove the
no-longer-shiny package, these extra packages will linger on your system,
consuming hard drive space, unless you manually remove them.

Obviously, all of this manual labor is a tedious chore, and so most package
management systems come with software which takes care of some or all of it for
you. apt is a common base on which to build these programs: in addition to
aptitude, programs such as synaptic and apt-watch make use of apt.

apt works by keeping a list of the packages that can be downloaded from Debian
on your computer. This list is used to find packages that need to be upgraded
and to install new packages. apt can also solve many dependency problems
automatically: for instance, when you choose to install a package, it will find
any additional required packages and install those as well.

When working with a package manager based on apt, such as aptitude, you will
typically perform three basic tasks: you will update the list of packages that
are available by downloading new lists from the Debian servers, you will select
which packages should be installed, upgraded, or removed, and finally, you will
commit your selections by actually performing the installations, removals, etc.

apt-based package managers read the list of “sources” -- repositories of Debian
packages -- from the file /etc/apt/sources.list. The format and contents of this
file are beyond the scope of this document, but are described in the manual page
sources.list(5).

How can I get aptitude?

In case you are reading this manual but aptitude is not yet installed on your
system, this section explains how to correct this unfortunate situation. Most
people should head straight for the section on binary packages.

  Pre-built aptitude packages, or, “what 99% of users should do”

Pre-built, or “binary” packages are the easiest and most common way to install
aptitude. You should only attempt a source install if binary packages are not
available for some reason, or if you have unusual needs that are not met by
binary packages.

If you are using a Debian system, execute the following command as root: apt-get
install aptitude. If you are not using a Debian system, your system provider
might have created a pre-built package of aptitude; if you are not sure, you can
contact them for further suggestions.

  Building aptitude from source code

You also can build aptitude from source; however, this is probably not a useful
exercise unless apt is already available on your system. If it is, you can
install aptitude from source with the following steps:

 1. Install the following pieces of software:

       • A C++ compiler, such as g++.

       • The development files for apt, typically available in a package with a
         name like libapt-pkg-dev.

       • The libsigc++-2.0 library, available in the package libsigc++-2.0-dev
         or from http://libsigc.sourceforge.net.

       • The cwidget library, available in the package libcwidget-dev or from
         http://cwidget.alioth.debian.org.

       • The gettext program, which should be included with your Linux
         distribution.

       • A make tool, such as GNU make.

 2. Last but not least, download the most recent aptitude source code, available
    from http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/aptitude. (scroll to the
    bottom of the page and download the “.orig.tar.gz” file)

Once all the required components are available, open a terminal and execute the
command tar zxf aptitude-0.8.13.tar.gz to unpack the source code. Once the
source code is unpacked, type cd aptitude-0.8.13 && ./configure && make to
compile aptitude. If this succeeds, make sure you are the root user (by using
su, for instance), then type make install to install aptitude on your computer.
Once aptitude is successfully installed, typing aptitude at a command prompt
should start the program.

  Tracking and participating in aptitude development

    Getting the aptitude development source tree

If you want to test the latest bleeding-edge source code for aptitude, you can
download unreleased aptitude source code using Git. Install Git (available from
http://git-scm.com/) and execute the command git clone
git://anonscm.debian.org/aptitude/aptitude.git to retrieve the most recent
source code.

[Warning] Warning
          The aptitude Git repository is an active development tree; it will
          change as bugs are fixed and features are added, and there is
          absolutely no guarantee that it will even compile, let alone run
          properly! Bug reports are welcome, but be aware that you use
          development code entirely at your own risk!^[1]

    Mailing list

The primary mailing list for aptitude development is
<aptitude-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org>. Archives of the list are located at
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/aptitude-devel/. To subscribe, visit
the Web page http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/aptitude-devel.

    Submitting patches

Ideally, patches should be submitted to the aptitude mailing list,
<aptitude-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org>. But if you prefer sending them by
private email, you may email them to <aptitude@packages.debian.org> or
<dburrows@debian.org>. A brief description of the motivation behind your patch,
and an explanation of how it works, are greatly appreciated.

    Tracking changes to the aptitude source tree

The aptitude source tree is regularly updated with new features, bugfixes, and
new bugs. Once the source code is available on your computer (see the previous
section), you can cd into it and type git pull to update it with any changes
made to the main repository.

To automatically receive notifications when changes are made to the aptitude
codebase, subscribe to the Atom feed available at
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=aptitude/aptitude.git;a=atom or RSS feed
available at http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=aptitude/aptitude.git;a=rss.

    Building aptitude from the development tree

To build aptitude from the Git repository, you must have the programs autoconf
and automake installed. Type sh ./autogen.sh && ./configure to generate the
files needed to compile aptitude, then execute make and make install.

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

^[1] Of course, all free software is used at your own risk, but the risk
involved in using an active development tree is much higher.

                           Chapter 1. Getting started

Table of Contents

Using aptitude

             aptitude basics

             Navigating the aptitude package list

             Finding packages by name

             Managing packages

             Updating the package list and installing packages

Using aptitude from the command line

        A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.      
                                                                      -- Lao Tsu

aptitude is a sizeable program with many features, and it can be a bit
overwhelming for new users to get acquainted with it. This chapter does not
exhaustively describe the features of aptitude (see Chapter 2, aptitude
reference guide for that), but it does provide a walk-through of the basic and
most commonly used features of the program.

Using aptitude

This section describes how to use the visual interface of aptitude. For
information on using aptitude's command-line interface, see the section called
“Using aptitude from the command line”.

  aptitude basics

To run aptitude, open your favorite text terminal, and at the command line,
type:

foobar$ aptitude

Once the cache is loaded (this may take some time on slower machines), the main
aptitude screen should appear:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1
--- Installed Packages
--- Not Installed Packages
--- Obsolete and Locally Created Packages
--- Virtual Packages
--- Tasks






These packages are currently installed on your computer.









As you can see, the main screen of aptitude is divided into several regions. The
blue line at the top of the terminal is the menu bar, and the blue lines below
it are informational messages describing some important commands. The black
space that follows is the list of all available packages, in which some groups
of packages are listed. The currently selected group (“Installed Packages”) is
highlighted, and its description is shown in the lower black space.

As the top line of the screen suggests, you can access aptitude's menus by
pressing Control+t (also valid: Control+Space and F10); you can also click the
mouse on a menu title if your system supports it. Pressing Control+t will open
the Actions menu:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
+-------------------------+  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
|Install/remove packages g|
|Update package list     u|
|Forget new packages     f|
|Clean package cache      |eated Packages
|Clean obsolete files     |
|Mark Upgradable         U|
|Play Minesweeper         |
|Become root              |
+-------------------------+
|Quit                    Q|
+-------------------------+
These packages are currently installed on your computer.









Perform all pending installs and removals

Use the arrow keys and Enter to select menu items (or, if your system supports
it, click on them with a mouse); to close the menu without selecting anything,
press Control+t again. The currently highlighted menu item is explained at the
bottom of the screen. If a menu item can be activated using a keyboard shortcut,
the shortcut is displayed in the menu: for instance, the command “Update package
list” can be activated by pressing u.

At any time, you can press ? to display an on-line reference to the available
keyboard shortcuts.

  Navigating the aptitude package list

The list of packages is the primary interface to aptitude. When aptitude starts,
the list is organized into a number of groups, as can be seen in the following
screen shot:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1
--- Installed Packages
--- Not Installed Packages
--- Obsolete and Locally Created Packages
--- Virtual Packages
--- Tasks






These packages are currently installed on your computer.









[Note] Note
       Empty groups of packages are automatically hidden by aptitude, so you may
       see more or less groups than appear in this screen shot.

In the screen shot above, the first group (“Installed Packages”) is highlighted
to indicate that it is currently selected. You can move the selection up and
down with the arrow keys; note that the description below the package list
changes as you do so. To “expand” a group, press Enter while the group is
selected:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1
--\ Installed Packages
  --- admin - Administrative utilities (install software, manage users, etc)
  --- base - The Debian base system
  --- devel - Utilities and programs for software development
  --- doc - Documentation and specialized programs for viewing documentation
  --- editors - Text editors and word processors
  --- electronics - Programs for working with circuits and electronics
  --- games - Games, toys, and fun programs
  --- gnome - The GNOME Desktop System
  --- graphics - Utilities to create, view, and edit graphics files

These packages are currently installed on your computer.









As you can see, the “Installed Packages” group has been expanded to reveal its
contents: it contains a number of subgroups, loosely defined by what types of
software they contain. Expanding the “admin” section by selecting it and
pressing Enter, we see:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1
--\ Installed Packages
  --\ admin - Administrative utilities (install software, manage users, etc)
    --- main - The main Debian archive
  --- base - The Debian base system
  --- devel - Utilities and programs for software development
  --- doc - Documentation and specialized programs for viewing documentation
  --- editors - Text editors and word processors
  --- electronics - Programs for working with circuits and electronics
  --- games - Games, toys, and fun programs
  --- gnome - The GNOME Desktop System

Packages in the 'admin' section allow you to perform administrative tasks such
as installing software, managing users, configuring and monitoring your system,
examining network traffic, and so on.







The “admin” group contains a single subgroup, the “main” Debian archive.
Expanding this group reveals some packages!

[Tip] Tip
      To save time, you can use the [ key to expand all the subgroups of a group
      at once. Selecting “Installed Packages” and pressing [ would have
      immediately revealed the packages in the screenshot below.

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1
--\ Installed Packages
  --\ admin - Administrative utilities (install software, manage users, etc)
    --\ main - The main Debian archive
i     acpid                                                1.0.3-19   1.0.3-19
i     alien                                                8.44       8.44
i     anacron                                              2.3-9      2.3-9
i     apt-show-versions                                    0.07       0.07
i A   apt-utils                                            0.5.25     0.5.25
i     apt-watch                                            0.3.2-2    0.3.2-2
i     aptitude                                             0.2.14.1-2 0.2.14.1-2

The Debian distribution consists of packages from the 'main' section. Every
package in 'main' is Free Software.

For more information about what Debian considers to be Free Software, see
http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines





In addition to the arrow keys, you can move the selection through the package
list by a page of information at a time using the Page Up and Page Down keys.

[Tip] Tip
      When there is more information in the lower half of the display than fits
      into the available space, the a and z keys can be used to scroll through
      it.

  Finding packages by name

To quickly find a package whose name you know, press / to open a search dialog:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1
i     frozen-bubble                                        1.0.0-5    1.0.0-5
i A   frozen-bubble-data                                   1.0.0-5    1.0.0-5
i     geekcode                                             1.7.3-1    1.7.3-1
i     gfpoken                                              0.25-3     0.25-3
i     ggz-gnome-client                                     0.0.7-2    0.0.7-2
i     ggz-gtk-client                                       0.0.7-1    0.0.7-1
i     ggz-gtk-game-data                                    0.0.7-2    0.0.7-2
i +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
i |Search for:                                                               |
i |froz                                                                      |
Po|                             [ Ok ]                             [ Cancel ]|
Fr+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
attempt to shoot bubbles into groups of the same color to cause them to pop. It
features 100 single-player levels, a two-player mode, music and striking
graphics.

This game is widely rumored to be responsible for delaying the Woody release.

URL: http://www.frozen-bubble.org/


As you can see in the above screen shot, a search for froz finds the
frozen-bubble package. Using aptitude's powerful search language, described in
the section called “Search patterns”, it is possible to find packages based on
many complex criteria.

[Tip] Tip
      You can search backwards in the package list by pressing \, and you can
      repeat the last search by pressing n after closing the search window.

Sometimes it is useful to hide all packages except those which meet some
particular criterion. To do this, press l:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1
--- Installed Packages
--- Not Installed Packages
--- Obsolete and Locally Created Packages
--- Virtual Packages
--- Tasks


  +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  |Enter the new package tree limit:                                         |
  |apti                                                                      |
  |                             [ Ok ]                             [ Cancel ]|
Th+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ a









This dialog works exactly like the search dialog, except that instead of
highlighting the next package that matches what you typed into the dialog box,
it hides all packages which don't match. For instance, typing apti into this
dialog box and pressing Enter will hide all packages except those whose names
contain “apti”:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1
--\ Installed Packages
  --\ admin - Administrative utilities (install software, manage users, etc)
    --\ main - The main Debian archive
i     aptitude                                             0.2.14.1-2 0.2.14.1-2
i A   synaptic                                             0.51-1     0.51-1
  --\ x11 - The X window system and related software
    --\ main - The main Debian archive
i     xfree86-driver-synaptics                             0.13.3-1   0.13.3-1
--- Not Installed Packages
--- Virtual Packages

These packages are currently installed on your computer.









  Managing packages

Now that you can move about the list of packages, it's time to start using
aptitude to install and remove packages. In this section you will learn how to
flag packages for installation, deletion, and upgrade.

[Tip] Tip
      You can only change your system's setup as the root user. If you want to
      experiment with aptitude, you can safely run it as any user other than
      root without damaging your system in any way. aptitude will tell you when
      you try to do something that only root can do, and if you want to
      continue, you must type root's password.

All changes to a package are performed by first highlighting it in the package
list, then pressing a key corresponding to the action which should be performed.
The basic action keys ^[2] are + to install or upgrade a package, - to remove a
package, and = to prevent a package from being automatically upgraded (this is
known as holding the package). These actions are not performed immediately;
aptitude will simply update the package list to show the change that has been
requested.

For instance, in the screen shot below, the kaffeine-mozilla package was
selected and + was pushed. The package is now highlighted in green and the
letter “i” has appeared to the left of its name, to indicate that it will be
installed; in addition, an estimate of the amount of space that the package will
use is displayed.

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1                  Will use 2925kB of disk space  DL Size: 1375kB
  --\ kde - The KDE Desktop System
    --\ main - The main Debian archive
p     bibletime-i18n                                        <none>     1.4.1-1
p     education-desktop-kde                                 <none>     0.771
p     junior-kde                                            <none>     1.4
piA   kaffeine                                      +2843kB <none>     0.4.3-1
pi    kaffeine-mozilla                              +81.9kB <none>     0.4.3-1
p     karamba                                               <none>     0.17-5
p     kde-devel                                             <none>     4:3.1.2
p     kde-devel-extras                                      <none>     4:3.1.2
The K Desktop Environment (development files)
A metapackage containing dependencies for the core development suite of KDE
including kdesdk, qt3-designer, and all core KDE -dev packages.








[Tip] Tip
      At any time, you can use Undo → Undo (Control+u) to “undo” any change to
      one or more packages. This is very useful if an action has unforeseen
      consequences and you want to “take it back”.

In addition to actions that affect individual packages, another important action
is available: typing U will attempt to upgrade any packages that can be
upgraded. You should use this command on a regular basis to keep your system
up-to-date.

    Managing broken packages

Sometimes, changing a package's state will cause dependency relationships to
become unfulfilled; packages with unfulfilled dependencies are said to be
broken. aptitude will warn you when this happens, and explain why it occured.
For instance, here is what happens if I attempt to remove sound-juicer:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.3.3       #Broken: 1   Will free 48.6MB of disk space
i A   nautilus                                             2.10.1-4   2.10.1-4
i     nautilus-cd-burner                                   2.10.2-1.1 2.10.2-1.1
i A   nautilus-data                                        2.10.1-4   2.10.1-4
i     netspeed                                             0.12.1-1   0.12.1-1
i A   oaf                                                  0.6.10-3   0.6.10-3
i     pybliographer                                        1.2.6.2-1  1.2.6.2-1
i     rhythmbox                                            0.8.8-13   0.8.8-13
i     shermans-aquarium                                    3.0.1-1    3.0.1-1
idA   sound-juicer                                 -1733kB 2.10.1-3   2.10.1-3
GNOME 2 CD Ripper
sound-juicer will be removed.


The following packages depend on sound-juicer and will be broken by its
removal:


  * gnome-desktop-environment depends on sound-juicer

[1(1)/...] Suggest 2 keeps
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

As you can see, aptitude displays three indicators that something has gone
wrong: first, the number of broken packages is displayed in the upper blue area;
second, the lower half of the display changes to describe broken packages that
are related to the currently highlighted package; third, a bar appears at the
bottom of the screen with a suggestion on how to solve the problem. To quickly
find broken packages in the package list, you can press b or search for ?broken.

[Note] Note
       The text [1(1)/...] indicates the progress of aptitude's dependency
       resolver. The first number is the solution that you have currently
       selected, and the second one is the number of solutions that aptitude has
       already generated. The presence of the text “...” indicates that there
       may be additional solutions beyond the ones generated; if aptitude knew
       for certain that it had generated the only possible solution, this
       indicator would read [1/1].

To see more information about how aptitude thinks you can solve this problem,
press e. A screen similar to the following will appear:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
                Packages                          Resolve Dependencies
  --\ Keep the following packages at their current version:
    gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia                           [0.8.10-1 (unstable, now)]
    sound-juicer                                                [2.10.1-2 (now)]
















[1(1)/...] Suggest 2 keeps
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

From here, you can see more solutions by pressing . or return to solutions that
you previously examined by pressing ,. To apply the current solution and return
to the package list, press !. For instance, pressing . while the above screen is
displayed results in the following solution being presented:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
                Packages                          Resolve Dependencies
  --\ Keep the following packages at their current version:
    sound-juicer                                      [2.10.1-3 (unstable, now)]
  --\ Downgrade the following packages:
    gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia          [0.8.11-1 unstable, now -> 0.8.8-3 testing]















[2(2)/...] Suggest 1 keep,1 downgrade
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

In addition to the basic solution navigation commands, you can press r to
“reject” actions of which you disapprove. For instance, the first solution will
cancel the removal of sound-juicer -- the very action we were trying to perform!
By pressing r on the item corresponding to this action, we can tell aptitude
that it should not cancel the removal of sound-juicer in this way.

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
                Packages                          Resolve Dependencies
  --\ Keep the following packages at their current version:
    gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia                           [0.8.11-1 (unstable, now)]
R   sound-juicer                                      [2.10.1-3 (unstable, now)]






GNOME 2 CD Ripper
gnome-desktop-environment depends upon sound-juicer
--\ The following actions will resolve this dependency:
  -> Remove gnome-desktop-environment [1:2.10.2.3 (unstable, testing, now)]
R -> Cancel the removal of sound-juicer
  -> Downgrade sound-juicer [2.10.1-3 (unstable, now) -> 0.6.1-2 (testing)]




[1(1)/...] Suggest 2 keeps
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

As you can see, the list item corresponding to keeping sound-juicer at its
current version has turned red and been marked with an “R”, indicating that it
has been rejected. Solutions that you generate in the future (that is, any
solution that you have not yet viewed) will not include this action, although
solutions that were already generated and contain this action will be available.

[Note] Note
       In the above screen image, a description of sound-juicer is displayed in
       the middle of the screen; below it, you can see the dependency that
       caused sound-juicer to be kept at its current version, along with all the
       ways to resolve this dependency that aptitude knows about.

For instance, if this rejection is imposed immediately after attempting to
remove sound-juicer, pressing . retrieves the following solution, skipping the
solution that cancels the installation of sound-juicer and downgrades
gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia.

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
                Packages                          Resolve Dependencies
  --\ Remove the following packages:
    gnome-desktop-environment              [1:2.10.2.3 (unstable, testing, now)]

















[2(2)/...] Suggest 1 removal
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

Rejections are only applied to newly generated solutions: that is, solutions
that are generated when you press . while viewing the last generated solution.
Previously generated solutions can still contain rejections. You can cancel a
rejection at any time by once again selecting the rejected action and pressing
r; this will permit solutions containing the action to be generated again,
including any solutions that were previously “skipped”.

The opposite of rejecting an action is approving it. To approve an action, just
select it and press a; this forces the problem resolver to choose the action
whenever possible^[3]. Approved actions will turn green and will be marked with
“A”, as in the following screenshot:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
                Packages                          Resolve Dependencies
  --\ Remove the following packages:
A   gnome-desktop-environment              [1:2.10.2.3 (unstable, testing, now)]

















[2(2)/...] Suggest 1 removal
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

[Important] Important
            If you do not resolve any broken dependencies, aptitude will
            automatically implement its current suggestion when you commit your
            selections by pressing g. However, it is hard to automatically solve
            dependency problems, and you may not be happy with the results, so
            it is generally better to look at what aptitude plans to do before
            committing your selections.

  Updating the package list and installing packages

At this point, you know enough about aptitude to actually make modifications to
your system.

You should periodically update your list of available packages from the Debian
servers, to keep track of new packages and new versions of packages. To do this,
press u. At any time during the download, you can press q to abort it.

Once you have fresh lists of packages, you can choose the packages to upgrade,
install, or remove as described in the previous section. To review the actions
you have requested, press g once. When installing the kaffeine-mozilla package
(from the previous example), the following screen appears:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1                  Will use 2925kB of disk space  DL Size: 1375kB
--\ Packages being automatically installed to satisfy dependencies
piA kaffeine                                        +2843kB <none>     0.4.3-1
--\ Packages to be installed
pi  kaffeine-mozilla                                +81.9kB <none>     0.4.3-1







These packages are being installed because they are required by another package
you have chosen for installation.

If you select a package, an explanation of its current state will appear in this
space.





As you can see, aptitude automatically decided to install kaffeine for me
because kaffeine-mozilla requires it. At this point, I have the choice of either
continuing with the installation by pressing g, or aborting it by pressing q.

Using aptitude from the command line

In addition to its “visual” interface described in the previous section,
aptitude can be used to manage packages directly from the command-line in the
same way that you would use apt-get. This section covers the most common
aptitude command-line actions; for more information, see the aptitude
command-line reference.

In general, a command-line invocation of aptitude will look like this:

aptitude action [arguments...]

action tells aptitude what action it is to take; the remaining arguments are
used in an option-specific fashion. Typically they will consist of package names
and command-line switches^[4].

The most important actions are:

aptitude update

        This command updates the package lists, as if you had entered the visual
        interface and pressed u.

aptitude safe-upgrade

        This command will upgrade as many packages as it can upgrade without
        removing existing packages.

        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 those packages as
        well.

aptitude full-upgrade

        Like safe-upgrade, this command will attempt to upgrade packages, but it
        is more aggressive about solving dependency problems: it will install
        and remove packages until all dependencies are satisfied. Because of the
        nature of this command, it is possible that it will do undesirable
        things, and so you should be careful when using it.

        [Note] Note
               For historical reasons, this command was originally named
               dist-upgrade, and that name is still recognized by aptitude.

aptitude [ install | remove | purge ] pkg1 [pkg2...]

        These commands install, remove, or purge^[5] the specified packages.
        “Installing” a package which is already installed but can be upgraded
        will cause it to be upgraded.

aptitude search pattern1 [pattern2...]

        This command searches for packages whose name contains any of the given
        patterns, printing the result to the terminal. In addition to just being
        a string of text, each pattern can be a search pattern as described in
        the section called “Search patterns”. ^[6] For instance, “aptitude
        search gnome kde” will list all packages whose name contains either
        “gnome” or “kde”.

aptitude show pkg1 [pkg2...]

        Prints information about each pkg to the terminal.

The commands that install, upgrade, and remove packages all accept the parameter
-s, which stands for “simulate”. When -s is passed on the command line, the
program performs all the actions it would normally perform, but does not
actually download or install/remove any files.

aptitude will sometimes present a prompt like this:

The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
  space-orbit-common
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  space-orbit space-orbit-common
0 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 3200kB of archives. After unpacking 8413kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

In addition to the obvious options of “Yes” and “No”, a number of commands are
available which can be used to change the information displayed at the prompt,
or to specify further actions. For instance, typing s will display or hide
information about how much space each package will use:

Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] s

Size changes will be shown.

The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
  space-orbit-common <+8020kB>
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  space-orbit <+393kB> space-orbit-common <+8020kB>
0 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 3200kB of archives. After unpacking 8413kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

Similarly, typing d will display information about automatically installed or
removed packages:

The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
  space-orbit-common (D: space-orbit)
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  space-orbit space-orbit-common
0 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 3200kB of archives. After unpacking 8413kB will be used.

This shows that space-orbit-common is being installed because space-orbit
depends on it. You can see the entire list of possible entries by entering ? at
the prompt.

If your request violates dependencies in a way that cannot be trivially
resolved, aptitude will ask you what to do:

The following packages are BROKEN:
  libsdl1.2debian
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libsdl1.2debian-alsa
.
.
.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Install the following packages:
libsdl1.2debian-all [1.2.12-1 (unstable)]

Score is 41

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]

Typing y (or simply pressing enter) will accept the proposed solution. Typing n
will display the “next best” solution:

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] n
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Install the following packages:
libsdl1.2debian-esd [1.2.12-1 (unstable)]

Score is 19

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]

As with the main command-line prompt, you can perform a number of additional
actions, including manually altering the states of packages, from the dependency
resolution prompt. Type ? to see a complete list.

Typing q will abort the automatic resolver and allow you to resolve the
dependencies manually:

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] q
aptitude failed to find a solution to these dependencies.  You can solve them yourself by hand or type 'n' to quit.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  libsdl1.2debian: Depends: libsdl1.2debian-alsa (= 1.2.12-1) but it is not installable or
                            libsdl1.2debian-all (= 1.2.12-1) but it is not installable or
                            libsdl1.2debian-esd (= 1.2.12-1) but it is not installable or
                            libsdl1.2debian-arts (= 1.2.12-1) but it is not installable or
                            libsdl1.2debian-oss (= 1.2.12-1) but it is not installable or
                            libsdl1.2debian-nas (= 1.2.12-1) but it is not installable or
                            libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio (= 1.2.12-1) but it is not installable
Resolve these dependencies by hand? [N/+/-/_/:/?]

You can use any of the package manipulation commands to resolve the broken
dependencies (type ? for a full list of the available commands). Type n or press
enter to quit aptitude:

Resolve these dependencies by hand? [N/+/-/_/:/?] n
Abort.

For complete documentation of the command-line features of aptitude, see
Command-line reference.

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

^[2] You can also change packages using the Package menu; see the section called
“The Package menu” for details.

^[3] Approving an action is slightly different from requiring all solutions to
contain the action; what it means is that given a choice between an approved
action and a non-approved action, the resolver will always pick the approved
action. If there are several possible approved actions, all of them will be
candidates to be placed into the solution.

^[4] A “switch” is a letter preceded by a hyphen: for instance, “-a”, “-v”, etc.

^[5] Purging a package removes the package, as well as all its configuration
files.

^[6] In fact, the same is true of the commands that take packages as arguments,
such as install or show.

                      Chapter 2. aptitude reference guide

Table of Contents

The aptitude terminal user interface

             Using the menus

             Menu commands

             Working with multiple views

             Becoming root

Managing packages

             Managing the package list

             Accessing package information

             Modifying package states

             Downloading, installing, and removing packages

             Understanding and managing package trust

             Managing automatically installed packages

Resolving package dependencies

             Dependency resolution in aptitude

             Immediate dependency resolution

             Resolving Dependencies Interactively

             Costs in the interactive dependency resolver

             Configuring the interactive dependency resolver

Search patterns

             Searching for strings

             Shorthand for search terms

             Searches and versions

             Explicit search targets

             Search term reference

Customizing aptitude

             Customizing the package list

             Customizing keybindings

             Customizing text colors and styles

             Customizing the display layout

             Configuration file reference

             Themes

Playing Minesweeper

  The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. 'Where shall I begin, please your     
  Majesty?' he asked.

  'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to
  the end: then stop.'
                                            -- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

aptitude is a large program with many features, and it is sometimes difficult to
remember how to do something, or even to remember whether that something is even
possible. Indeed, many feature requests received by the author describe features
which are already present but are difficult to find.^[7]

In an attempt to combat this obscurity, this reference guide describes every
feature and configuration parameter of aptitude. For a more gentle guide to the
important features of aptitude, see Chapter 1, Getting started.

[Note] Note
       aptitude's behavior and appearance can be configured in a number of ways.
       This manual describes how the program works with the default settings;
       descriptions of how various settings affect behavior are given in the
       section called “Customizing aptitude”.

The aptitude terminal user interface

This section describes the parts of the terminal-based user interface of
aptitude that do not deal with managing packages.

  Using the menus

The menu bar at the top of the screen lists the most important commands in
aptitude. To activate the menu bar, press Control+t (also valid: Control+Space
and F10); you can then navigate it using the arrow keys and select a menu item
using Enter.

Some menu items also have “hotkeys”: letters or numbers that can be used to
select the item while the menu is active. These hotkeys are displayed in a
brighter shade of white than the rest of the menu.

In addition, some menu items have “shortcuts”: keystrokes that perform the same
action as the menu item while the menu is not active. These keystrokes are
listed on the right-hand side of the menu.

In the remainder of the manual, menu commands will be written like this: Menu →
Item (key). This indicates that you should choose Item from the Menu menu, and
that key is the shortcut for this command.

  Menu commands

    The Actions menu

Figure 2.1. Commands available in the Actions menu

┌────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│          Command           │                   Description                   │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ If an installation preview is not visible,      │
│ Actions → Install/remove   │ display one; otherwise, perform an install run  │
│ packages (g)               │ as described in the section called              │
│                            │ “Downloading, installing, and removing          │
│                            │ packages”.                                      │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Actions → Update package   │ Bring the package list up-to-date.              │
│ list (u)                   │                                                 │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Actions → Mark Upgradable  │ Flag all upgradable packages, except those      │
│ (U)                        │ which are held or forbidden from upgrading, for │
│                            │ upgrade.                                        │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Actions → Forget new       │ Discard all information about what packages are │
│ packages (f)               │ “new” (empty the “New Packages” tree).          │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ Cancel all pending actions from this session    │
│ Actions → Cancel pending   │ (including installations, removals, upgrades,   │
│ actions                    │ holds, marking as automatically installed...).  │
│                            │ This is roughly equivalent to restart the       │
│                            │ program.                                        │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Actions → Clean package    │ Delete all the compressed packages that were    │
│ cache                      │ downloaded by aptitude ^[a].                    │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ Delete any compressed packages that were        │
│                            │ downloaded by aptitude ^[a] and are no longer   │
│ Actions → Clean obsolete   │ available. These are presumed to be packages    │
│ files                      │ which are obsolete, and can be deleted to save  │
│                            │ disk space without requiring an otherwise       │
│                            │ unnecessary download.                           │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Actions → Play Minesweeper │ Play a game of Minesweeper, as described in the │
│                            │ section called “Playing Minesweeper”.           │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Actions → Become root      │ Continue working as the root user; see the      │
│                            │ section called “Becoming root”.                 │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Actions → Quit (Q)         │ Quit aptitude, saving any changes to package    │
│                            │ states.                                         │
├────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ^[a] Or any other apt utility.                                               │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    The Undo menu

Figure 2.2. Commands available in the Undo menu

┌─────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│         Command         │                    Description                     │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                         │ Cancel the effect of the last change to a          │
│ Undo → Undo (Control+u) │ package's state, up to the last time aptitude was  │
│                         │ started, the package list was updated, or an       │
│                         │ install run was performed.                         │
└─────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    The Package menu

Figure 2.3. Commands available in the Package menu

┌─────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│         Command         │                    Description                     │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Package → Install (+)   │ Flag the currently selected package for            │
│                         │ installation.                                      │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Package → Reinstall (L) │ Flag the currently selected package for            │
│                         │ reinstallation.                                    │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Package → Remove (-)    │ Flag the currently selected package for removal.   │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Package → Purge (_)     │ Flag the currently selected package to be purged.  │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                         │ Cancel any pending installation, upgrade, or       │
│ Package → Keep (:)      │ removal of the currently selected package, and     │
│                         │ remove any hold that was set on the package.       │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Package → Hold (=)      │ Hold the currently selected package back.          │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                         │ Mark the currently selected package as an          │
│                         │ “automatically installed” package. For more        │
│ Package → Mark Auto (M) │ information on manually and automatically          │
│                         │ installed packages, see the section called         │
│                         │ “Managing automatically installed packages”.       │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                         │ Mark the currently selected package as a “manually │
│ Package → Mark Manual   │ installed” package. For more information on        │
│ (m)                     │ manually and automatically installed packages, see │
│                         │ the section called “Managing automatically         │
│                         │ installed packages”.                               │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                         │ If a package that can be upgraded is selected,     │
│ Package → Forbid        │ forbid it from being upgraded to the currently     │
│ Version (F)             │ available version. If a version of a package is    │
│                         │ selected, forbid the package from being upgraded   │
│                         │ to that version.                                   │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                         │ Display a screen containing information about the  │
│ Package → Information   │ currently selected package, such as the packages   │
│ (enter)                 │ it depends upon, the packages which depend upon    │
│                         │ it, and its available versions.                    │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                         │ When browsing the package list, cycles through the │
│                         │ information that can be displayed in the           │
│                         │ information area (the lower half of the display).  │
│ Package → Cycle         │ The information area can display the long          │
│ Information (i)         │ description of the selected package (its default   │
│                         │ behavior), a summary of the dependencies related   │
│                         │ to the package, or an analysis of which other      │
│                         │ packages require or suggest the selected package.  │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                         │ Display the currently selected package's Debian    │
│ package → Changelog (C) │ changelog. To see the changelog of a particular    │
│                         │ version, select that version and execute this      │
│                         │ command.                                           │
└─────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    The Resolver menu

Figure 2.4. Commands available in the Resolver menu

┌────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│    Command     │                         Description                         │
├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Resolver →     │ Display a detailed description of the problem resolver's    │
│ Examine        │ current suggestion (see the section called “Resolving       │
│ Solution (e)   │ Dependencies Interactively”).                               │
├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Resolver →     │ Carry out the actions that the problem resolver is          │
│ Apply Solution │ currently suggesting.                                       │
│ (!)            │                                                             │
├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Resolver →     │                                                             │
│ Next Solution  │ Select the problem resolver's next suggestion.              │
│ (.)            │                                                             │
├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Resolver →     │                                                             │
│ Previous       │ Select the problem resolver's previous suggestion.          │
│ Solution (,)   │                                                             │
├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Resolver →     │                                                             │
│ First Solution │ Select the problem resolver's first suggestion.             │
│ (<)            │                                                             │
├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Resolver →     │ Select the problem resolver's most recently generated       │
│ Last Solution  │ solution (see the section called “Resolving Dependencies    │
│ (>)            │ Interactively”).                                            │
├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                │ When examining a solution, toggle whether the currently     │
│ Resolver →     │ selected action is rejected and move to the next action     │
│ Toggle         │ (see the section called “Resolving Dependencies             │
│ Rejected (r)   │ Interactively”). If the action is currently approved, its   │
│                │ approval will be cancelled.                                 │
├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                │ When examining a solution, toggle whether the currently     │
│ Resolver →     │ selected action is approved and move to the next action     │
│ Toggle         │ (see the section called “Resolving Dependencies             │
│ Approved (a)   │ Interactively”). If the action is currently rejected, its   │
│                │ rejection will be cancelled.                                │
├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Resolver →     │ When examining a solution, view detailed information about  │
│ View Target    │ the package which is affected by the currently selected     │
│ (Enter)        │ action (see the section called “Resolving Dependencies      │
│                │ Interactively”).                                            │
├────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                │ Reject (as if with Resolver → Toggle Rejected (r)) all      │
│ Resolver →     │ actions that would break a hold on a package or install a   │
│ Reject         │ forbidden version. These actions are rejected by default    │
│ Breaking Holds │ unless Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Allow-Break-Holds is set  │
│                │ to true, but this menu item allows you to reject them       │
│                │ manually at any time.                                       │
└────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    The Search menu

Figure 2.5. Commands available in the Search menu

┌────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│          Command           │                   Description                   │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ Find the next package in the package list that  │
│ Search → Find (/)          │ matches a search pattern (see the section       │
│                            │ called “Search patterns”).                      │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Search → Find Backwards    │ Find the previous package in the package list   │
│ (\)                        │ that matches a search pattern (see the section  │
│                            │ called “Search patterns”).                      │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Search → Find Again (n)    │ Repeat the last Find command.                   │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ Repeat the last Find command, but in the        │
│ Search → Find Again        │ opposite direction. If the last Find command    │
│ Backwards (N)              │ was Find Backwards, this will perform a         │
│                            │ forwards search, and vice versa.                │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ Filter the current package list by removing any │
│ Search → Limit Display (l) │ packages which do not match a search pattern    │
│                            │ (see the section called “Search patterns”).     │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Search → Un-Limit Display  │ Un-filter the current package list (all         │
│                            │ packages will be shown).                        │
├────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Search → Find Broken (b)   │ Find the next broken package. This is           │
│                            │ equivalent to searching for ?broken.            │
└────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    The Options menu

Figure 2.6. Commands available in the Options menu

┌───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│        Command        │                     Description                      │
├───────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                       │ Open a new top-level view in which you can modify    │
│                       │ aptitude's settings. Configuration options are       │
│ Options → Preferences │ displayed in a tree similar to the tree of packages; │
│                       │ to enable or disable an option, select it and press  │
│                       │ Space or Enter. Configuration options are saved to   │
│                       │ ~/.aptitude/config immediately upon being selected.  │
├───────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Options → Revert      │ Reset all options to their default values.           │
│ options               │                                                      │
└───────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    The Views menu

[Note] Note
       For an overview of how views work, see the section called “Working with
       multiple views”.

Figure 2.7. Commands available in the Views menu

┌───────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│            Command            │                 Description                  │
├───────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Views → Next (F6)             │ Change to the next active view.              │
├───────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Views → Prev (F7)             │ Change to the previous active view.          │
├───────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Views → Close (q)             │ Close the current view.                      │
├───────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Views → New Package View      │ Create a new view of the package list.       │
├───────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                               │ Create a view that displays packages which   │
│ Views → Audit Recommendations │ are not installed, and which a package       │
│                               │ installed on your system Recommends.         │
├───────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Views → New Flat Package List │ Create a new view of the package list in     │
│                               │ which packages are not categorized.          │
├───────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                               │ Create a new view of the package list in     │
│ Views → New Debtags Browser   │ which packages are categorized according to  │
│                               │ their debtags entries.                       │
├───────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                               │ A number of additional menu items appear;    │
│ Additional items              │ these correspond to the currently active     │
│                               │ views. To switch directly to a view, select  │
│                               │ it from the menu.                            │
└───────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    The Help menu

Figure 2.8. Commands available in the Help menu

┌──────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│       Command        │                      Description                      │
├──────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Help → About         │ Display some copyright information.                   │
├──────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Help → Help (?)      │ Display the on-line help page.                        │
├──────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Help → User's Manual │ Display the User's Manual (this document).            │
├──────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Help → FAQ           │ Display the aptitude FAQ.                             │
├──────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Help → ChangeLog     │ Display a history of the major changes made to        │
│                      │ aptitude.                                             │
├──────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Help → License       │ Display the terms under which you may copy, modify,   │
│                      │ and distribute aptitude.                              │
└──────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

  Working with multiple views

aptitude allows you to work with several “views” at once. A “view” (sometimes
called a “screen”) is simply something that can appear in the area of the screen
below the menu bar. The most common view is the package list, but download views
are also common.

When several views are open at once, a bar listing all the active views will
appear at the top of the screen. For instance, if I examine apt by pressing
Enter, then examine libc6, the screen will look something like this:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
         Packages                  apt info                  libc6 info
aptitude 0.3.1
i A  --\ libc6                                             2.3.2.ds1- 2.3.2.ds1-
  Description: GNU C Library: Shared libraries and Timezone data
    Contains the standard libraries that are used by nearly all programs on the
    system. This package includes shared versions of the standard C library and
    the standard math library, as well as many others. Timezone data is also
    included.
  Priority: required
  Section: base
  Maintainer: GNU Libc Maintainers <debian-glibc@lists.debian.org>
  Compressed size: 4901k
  Uncompressed size: 15.9M
  Source Package: glibc
  --\ Depends
    --- libdb1-compat
  --\ Suggests
    --- locales
    --- glibc-doc
  --\ Conflicts
GNU C Library: Shared libraries and Timezone data

You can close the current view using Views → Close (q). To switch to the next or
previous view, use Views → Next (F6) and Views → Prev (F7), or click on the
view's name at the top of the screen; you can also find a list of all active
views in the Views menu.

As shown above, some commands (for instance, viewing information about a
package) will create new views automatically; you can also explicitly create a
new view using Views → New Package View.

  Becoming root

Some actions, such as updating the package lists, can only be performed as root.
If you are not root and you try to update the package lists, aptitude will ask
if you want to become root:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1
--- Installed Packages
--- Not Installed Packages
--- Obsolete and Locally Created Packages
--- Virtual Packages
--- Tasks

  +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  |Updating the package lists requires administrative privileges, which     |
  |you currently do not have.  Would you like to change to the root account?|
  |                                                                         |
  |         [ Become root ]                  [ Don't become root ]          |
Th+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+









If you select “Become root”, aptitude will prompt you for root's password; when
you have correctly entered it, aptitude will perform the action that required
root privileges. You will still be root after the action completes.

You can switch to the root account at any time using the command Actions →
Become root. Any changes you have made to package states will be preserved (but
will not be saved until you quit aptitude).

By default, aptitude will use the command su to gain root privileges. If you
would like it to use some other command (such as sudo), set the configuration
option Aptitude::Get-Root-Command.

Managing packages

This section describes how to manipulate the list of packages, how to install
new packages on your system, and how to remove old packages.

  Managing the package list

To keep the list of packages up-to-date, it is recommended that you periodically
update it. You can do this using the Actions → Update package list (u) command.

  Accessing package information

Information about packages is presented in several locations in aptitude: the
package list gives a quick overview of the state of each package, and additional
views providing detailed information about a package are also available.

    The package list

The package list displays an “at-a-glance” synopsis of a package's state. For
instance, the package webmin might have the following synopsis:

piAU  webmin                                        +5837kB <none>     1.160-2

The four characters on the left-hand side of the synopsis show that the package
is not installed (“p”), that it is going to be installed (“i”), that it was
automatically chosen to be installed (“A”), and that it is untrusted (“U”). On
the right-hand side of the synopsis, the current version and the most recent
available version are displayed, along with an indication of how much space will
be used by the upgrade.

[Tip] Tip
      You can customize how package synopses are displayed; see the section
      called “Customizing how packages are displayed” for details.

The four status flags on the left-hand side of the screen give the basic
information about a package's state. The first character is the package's
current state. The second character is the action which will be taken on the
package. The third character indicates whether the package was automatically
installed (see the section called “Managing automatically installed packages”),
and the fourth character indicates whether the package is trusted (see the
section called “Understanding and managing package trust”).

The possible values of the “current state” flag are given in Figure 2.9, “Values
of the “current state” flag” and the possible values of the “action” flag are
given in Figure 2.10, “Values of the “action” flag”.

Figure 2.9. Values of the “current state” flag

i - the package is installed and all its dependencies are satisfied.
c - the package was removed, but its configuration files are still present.
p - the package and all its configuration files were removed, or the package was
    never installed.
v - the package is virtual.
B - the package has broken dependencies.
u - the package has been unpacked but not configured.
C - half-configured: the package's configuration was interrupted.
H - half-installed: the package's installation was interrupted.
W - triggers-awaited: the package awaits trigger processing by another package.
T - triggers-pending: The package has had an update triggered due to changes in
    another package.

Figure 2.10. Values of the “action” flag

i - the package will be installed.
u - the package will be upgraded.
w - the package will be downgraded.
d - the package will be deleted: it will be removed, but its configuration files
    will remain on the system.
p - the package will be purged: it and its configuration files will be removed.
h - the package will be held back: it will be kept at its current version, even
    if a newer version becomes available, until the hold is cancelled.
F - An upgrade of the package has been forbidden.
r - the package will be reinstalled.
    the package is “broken”: some of its dependencies will not be satisfied.
B - aptitude will not allow you to install, remove, or upgrade anything while
    you have broken packages.

In addition, aptitude will use colors to indicate package state if your terminal
supports it. State distinctions are mainly displayed using the background color:

Black

        The package cannot be upgraded (or is not going to be installed), and it
        has no dependency problems. If the package is installed, its name will
        be highlighted.

Green

        The package is going to be installed.

Blue

        The package is currently installed, and it will be upgraded.

Brown

        The package is currently installed, and it will be downgraded.

Magenta

        The package is currently installed, but it will be removed.

White

        The package is currently installed, and it is “held” at its current
        version: automatic upgrades will ignore it.

Red

        This package is broken: some of its dependencies will not be satisfied.

Finally, the lower half of the screen displays the long description. aptitude
will attempt to detect whether the package is involved in a dependency problem;
if so, information regarding the dependency problem will be displayed here. To
cycle between dependency information and the package description, press i.

    Detailed package information

Pressing Enter while a package is highlighted will display the package
information screen:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.2.14.1
i A --\ apt                                                0.5.25     0.5.25
  Description: Advanced front-end for dpkg
    This is Debian's next generation front-end for the dpkg package manager. It
    provides the apt-get utility and APT dselect method that provides a simpler,
    safer way to install and upgrade packages.

    APT features complete installation ordering, multiple source capability and
    several other unique features, see the Users Guide in apt-doc.
  Essential: yes
  Priority: important
  Section: base
  Maintainer: APT Development Team <deity@lists.debian.org>
  Compressed size: 970k
  Uncompressed size: 2961k
  Source Package: apt
  --\ Depends
    --- libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4)
    --- libgcc1 (>= 1:3.3.3-1)
    --- libstdc++5 (>= 1:3.3.3-1)
  --\ Suggests
    --- aptitude | synaptic | gnome-apt | wajig
    --- dpkg-dev
    --\ apt-doc (UNSATISFIED)
p     0.6.25
p     0.5.25
  --\ Replaces
    --- libapt-pkg-doc (< 0.3.7)
    --- libapt-pkg-dev (< 0.3.7)
  --- Package names provided by apt
  --- Packages which depend on apt
  --\ Versions
p A 0.6.25
i A 0.5.25


This display can be navigated in a manner similar to the package list: for
instance, in the screenshot above, I expanded the dependency on apt-doc,
revealing the available versions of apt-doc which will fulfill the dependency.
These versions can be manipulated in the same way that packages can: for
instance, to install version 0.5.25 of apt-doc, you would highlight it and press
+.

[Tip] Tip
      To quickly satisfy a dependency, select the dependency and press +;
      aptitude will attempt to automatically satisfy it.

In addition to the dependencies of a package, you can view the package names
that it Provides, the packages which depend upon it, and the available versions
of the package (including any other packages that Provide it).

As usual, you can dismiss this screen and return to the main view by pressing q.
For convenience, a few other information screens (which only display some
commonly-used information, hiding the rest) are available: press v to view the
versions of a package, d to view the dependencies of a package, and r to view
the “reverse dependencies” of a package (packages which depend upon it).

  Modifying package states

The following commands are available to modify the states of packages. Commands
take effect the next time you perform an install run; until you do, all of these
commands can be reversed using Undo → Undo (Control+u).

To apply a command to a package, simply select the package in a package list and
issue the command. These commands can also be applied to groups of packages by
selecting the group header (for instance, “Upgradable Packages”) and issuing the
command.

┌──────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│         Command          │                    Description                    │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                          │ Flag the current package for installation.        │
│                          │                                                   │
│ Install: Package →       │ If the package is not installed, it will be       │
│ Install (+)              │ installed. If it is already installed, it will be │
│                          │ upgraded if possible and any sticky upgrade       │
│                          │ prevention that is in effect (eg, Hold) will be   │
│                          │ cancelled.                                        │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Remove: Package → Remove │ Flag the currently selected package for removal.  │
│ (-)                      │                                                   │
│                          │ If the package is installed, it will be removed.  │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                          │ Flag the current package to be purged.            │
│                          │                                                   │
│ Purge: Package → Purge   │ If the package is installed, it will be removed.  │
│ (_)                      │ Furthermore, even if it is removed, any remaining │
│                          │ files (such as configuration files) related to    │
│                          │ the package will be removed from the system.      │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                          │ Flag the current package to be kept at its        │
│                          │ current version.                                  │
│                          │                                                   │
│ Keep: Package → Keep (:) │ Any action that was to be performed on the        │
│                          │ package -- installation, removal, or upgrade --   │
│                          │ is cancelled, and any persistent hold that was    │
│                          │ set on the package is removed.                    │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                          │ Set a persistent hold on the package.             │
│                          │                                                   │
│                          │ As with Keep, any action that was to be performed │
│ Hold: Package → Hold (=) │ on the package is cancelled. In addition, the     │
│                          │ package will not be automatically upgraded ^[a]   │
│                          │ until the hold is removed. You may cancel a hold  │
│                          │ by issuing the Install command.                   │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                          │ The package will not be automatically             │
│                          │ upgraded^[a] to the version it would currently be │
│                          │ upgraded to. If it was going to be upgraded, the  │
│                          │ upgrade will be cancelled.                        │
│                          │                                                   │
│                          │ If you issue this command on a particular version │
│ Package → Forbid Version │ of a package, the package will not be upgraded to │
│ (F)                      │ the selected version. Note that only one version  │
│                          │ can be forbidden at once.                         │
│                          │                                                   │
│                          │ This functionality is largely provided as a       │
│                          │ convenience for users of the “unstable”           │
│                          │ distribution, so they can avoid known-bad         │
│                          │ versions of packages.                             │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                          │ Flag the current package for reinstallation.      │
│                          │                                                   │
│                          │ Note that the reinstallation will not be saved    │
│ Reinstall: Package →     │ when you quit aptitude or perform an install run, │
│ Reinstall (L)            │ for technical reasons (essentially, the           │
│                          │ underlying software layers (dpkg and apt) do not  │
│                          │ provide any way to find out whether a             │
│                          │ reinstallation was successful or not).            │
├──────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                          │ Sets whether the package is treated as having     │
│ Package → Mark Auto (M), │ been automatically installed; automatically       │
│ Package → Mark Manual    │ installed packages will be removed when no other  │
│ (m)                      │ package requires them. For more information, see  │
│                          │ the section called “Managing automatically        │
│                          │ installed packages”.                              │
├──────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ^[a] That is, it will be unaffected by Actions → Mark Upgradable (U) or the  │
│ full-upgrade or safe-upgrade command-line actions.                           │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

In addition to these commands that affect the selected package, there are two
commands that affect large numbers of packages at once regardless of what is
selected. Actions → Forget new packages (f) clears the “new” status of all
packages in the package list, and Actions → Mark Upgradable (U) flags every
package which can be upgraded for upgrade, except for packages that are held
back or would be upgraded to a forbidden version.

[Note] Note
       All changes to package states are saved when you quit aptitude, update
       the package list, or perform an install run. If you do not wish to save
       your changes, you can always abort aptitude by pressing Ctrl-C.

  Downloading, installing, and removing packages

Changing package states as described in the previous section does not actually
affect what is installed on your system. Thus, you can adjust the state of
packages without affecting your system until you are happy with what you see;
once you are, you can “commit” the changes by actually installing and removing
packages.^[8]

To commit your changes, use the Actions → Install/remove packages (g) command.
Selecting this command will display a preview screen describing the changes that
will be performed. This screen is just a package list, and you can manipulate
the packages (for instance, cancelling unwanted removals) in the same way that
you could in the main list.

When you are done, use Views → Close (q) to cancel the installation, or use
Actions → Install/remove packages (g) to proceed. aptitude will download any
files that need to be downloaded, then prompt you to continue with the
installation. When you select “Continue”, the installations and removals will
commence.

Packages that are downloaded by aptitude are placed in a cache directory
(typically /var/cache/apt/archives). Normally, they are just left in this
directory ad infinitum. To delete all the files in this directory, use Actions →
Clean package cache; to delete only files which cannot be downloaded again (ie,
obsolete packages), use Actions → Clean obsolete files.

  Understanding and managing package trust

apt's ability to access multiple package sources leads to a potential security
vulnerability. Suppose you add an archive of packages published by Joe Random
Hacker to your sources.list file in order to install Joe's gargleblast package.
It is possible, however, that -- unbeknownst to you -- Joe's archive also
contains his own “customized” versions of packages such as libc6 and
ssh...versions that steal your private information or open backdoors on your
system! If these packages have higher version numbers than the legitimate Debian
packages, apt will blithely install them on your system during your next
upgrade, allowing Joe to do his dirty work undetected. Joe could also break into
your mirror of the Debian archives and replace the legitimate software with his
doctored version.

Luckily, newer versions of apt and aptitude, such as the version documented in
this manual, have built-in safeguards to help defeat this type of attack. apt
uses strong security mechanisms based on the popular GPG encryption software to
verify that the packages being distributed from the official Debian mirrors are
the same packages that were uploaded by the Debian developers. aptitude will
then warn you if you attempt to install a package from a non-Debian source, or
if you attempt to upgrade a package that was installed from a Debian source to a
version that came from a non-Debian source.

[Warning] Warning
          The security mechanisms in apt provide a near-perfect guarantee that
          the contents of your archive mirror are identical to the contents of
          the master Debian archive. However, they are not a panacea: for
          instance, there are many ways that a tampered package could
          theoretically find its way into the master Debian archive.

          Ensuring that you only install software from a trusted source will
          give you an important degree of protection against malicious packages,
          but it cannot eliminate all the risks inherent in installing software.

    Understanding trust

apt allows the administrator of an archive to provide a signature of the
archive's index. This signature, which (for all practical purposes) cannot be
forged, indicates that the package files listed in the index are the same files
that the administrator intended to place in the archive: ie, that the contents
of the archive have not been tampered with since it was created.^[9] The
signature can be validated by checking that it corresponds to the
administrator's public key. The public key of the Debian archive is distributed
with apt, typically on your Debian CD.

When aptitude downloads an archive index, it will check whether the index is
properly signed. If it is unsigned, aptitude will not trust package files from
that archive. (see below for information on what this means) If it has a
signature but the signature is incorrect or cannot be verified, a warning will
be printed and aptitude will refuse to trust packages from that archive.

Later, when you perform an install run, aptitude will check whether the packages
are from trusted sources. If an untrusted package is being installed, or a
package is being upgraded from a trusted to an untrusted version, a warning will
be displayed and you will have the opportunity to abort the download:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.3.0                    Will use 831kB of disk space   DL Size: 30.4MB
--\ Packages to be upgraded
iu U wesnoth                                       -98.3kB 0.8.7-1    0.8.8-1.0w
iuAU wesnoth-data                                  +930kB  0.8.7-1    0.8.8-1.0w
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|WARNING: untrusted versions of the following packages will be installed!     #|
|                                                                             #|
|Untrusted packages could compromise your system's security.  You should only #|
|proceed with the installation if you are certain that this is what you want  #|
|to do.                                                                       #|
|                                                                             #|
|  * wesnoth [version 0.8.8-1.0wesnoth.org]                                   #|
|  * wesnoth-data [version 0.8.8-1.0wesnoth.org]                              #|
|  * wesnoth-music [version 0.8.8-1.0wesnoth.org]                             #|
|         [ Really Continue ]                  [ Abort Installation ]          |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
                                                                               #
                                                                               #
                                                                               #
                                                                               #
                                                                               #
                                                                               #

    Trusting additional keys

You might find it useful to allow apt to trust additional archives, besides the
main Debian archive. For each archive that you want to trust, you will have to
acquire the public key that is used to sign the archive's package index. This is
typically a text file whose name ends in .asc; it might be provided by the site
administrator or downloadable from a public keyserver. For more information on
what public keys are and how to get them, see the GPG web page.

The list of keys that apt will trust is stored in the keyring file
/etc/apt/trusted.gpg. Once you have the GPG key, you can add it to this file by
executing the command gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg
--import newkey.asc. aptitude will then trust any archive that is signed with
the key contained in newkey.asc.

[Warning] Warning
          Once an archive's key has been added to the APT keyring, it will be
          trusted just as much as the main Debian mirrors themselves! You should
          only do this if you are very confident that the key you are adding is
          correct and that the person who holds the key is trustworthy and
          competent.

  Managing automatically installed packages

To install one package, it is often necessary to install several others (to
fulfill its dependencies). For instance, if you wish to install the clanbomber
package, you must also install the package libclanlib2. If you remove clanbomber
again, you probably no longer need the libclanlib2 package; aptitude will
attempt to detect this and automatically remove the libclanlib2 package.

It works like this: when you install a package, aptitude will automatically
install any other packages on which it depends. These packages are marked as
having been “automatically installed”; aptitude will monitor them and remove
them when they are no longer depended upon by any manually installed package
^[10] . They will appear in the preview as “packages being removed because they
are no longer used.”

As with any automatic process, there is a potential for things to go haywire.
For instance, even if a package was automatically installed to start with, it
might turn out to be useful in its own right. You can cancel the “automatic”
flag at any time by pressing m; if the package is already being removed, you can
use Package → Install (+) to cancel the removal and clear the “automatic” flag.

Resolving package dependencies

  Dependency resolution in aptitude

There are two main dependency resolution algorithms in aptitude.

The first is an algorithm that is also used by programs such as apt-get and
synaptic; I will call it “immediate resolution”. It is invoked whenever you
select a package for installation interactively, and immediately after one or
more packages are marked for installation at the command-line. Immediate
resolution is fast and will solve most dependency problems, but it is sometimes
unable to find any solution.

The second algorithm, which I will call “interactive resolution”, is invoked
when packages have broken dependencies even after immediate resolution^[11]. It
can resolve more dependencies, it allows you to review a solution before
applying it, and it allows you to provide feedback to the resolver, guiding it
towards a better solution.

  Immediate dependency resolution

Whenever you choose to install or upgrade a package in aptitude, aptitude makes
an immediate attempt to resolve any of its dependencies that are not fulfilled.
For each unsatisfied dependency (either a “Depends”, a “Recommends”, or a
“Conflicts”), it performs the following steps:

 1. If the dependency is a recommendation, aptitude tries to guess whether it is
    a “new” recommendation or a “previously satisfied” recommendation. aptitude
    considers a recommendation to be “new” if the package declaring the
    recommendation is not currently installed, or if its installed version does
    not recommend a package of the same name. On the other hand, a
    recommendation is “previously satisfied” if the package declaring the
    recommendation is installed, the currently installed version recommends a
    package of the same name, and that recommendation is currently fulfilled.

    For example: suppose that version 1.0 of prog recommends version 4.0 of
    libcool1, but version 2.0 of prog recommends version 5.0 of libcool1, and
    also recommends apache. If you choose to upgrade prog from version 1.0 to
    version 2.0, the recommendation of apache will be considered to be “new”
    because version 1.0 of prog did not recommend apache. On the other hand, the
    recommendation of libcool1 is not “new”, because version 1.0 of prog
    recommended libcool1, even though it recommended a different version.
    However, if libcool1 is installed, then that recommendation will be
    considered to be “previously satisfied”.

    If the configuration option APT::Install-Recommends is true, aptitude will
    always attempt to fulfill “new” and “previously satisfied” recommendations;
    all others will be ignored by immediate resolution. If that option is false,
    immediate dependency resolution will ignore all recommendations.

 2. If the dependency is on several packages combined with OR, examine each of
    the alternatives in the order that they are given. For instance, if a
    package depends on “exim | mail-transport-agent”, aptitude will first
    process exim, then mail-transport-agent.

 3. For each alternative, attempt to resolve it. If the dependency is a
    conflict, remove the current alternative if it is installed (and for an
    unversioned conflict, also remove any package providing the target of the
    conflict). Otherwise, install the candidate version of the current
    alternative if it satisfies the dependency. If not, or if there is no
    candidate version (for instance, because the current alternative is a
    virtual package), and if the dependency is unversioned, attempt to install
    the highest-priority package^[12] whose candidate version provides the
    target of the current alternative.

    For instance, say we are attempting to resolve “Depends: exim |
    mail-transport-agent”. aptitude will first attempt to install the package
    exim. If exim is not available, aptitude will then attempt to install the
    highest-priority package whose candidate version provides exim. If there is
    no such package, aptitude will install the highest-priority package whose
    candidate version provides the virtual package mail-transport-agent. On the
    other hand, suppose that the dependency is “Depends: exim (>= 2.0.0) |
    mail-transport-agent”, but only version 1.0 of exim is available. In this
    case, aptitude will not install exim (because the version does not match),
    nor will it attempt to install packages providing exim (because virtual
    packages cannot match a dependency with a version restriction). Thus,
    aptitude will fall back to installing the highest-priority package whose
    candidate version provides mail-transport-agent.

 4. If a package was installed by the previous step, resolve its dependencies
    using this algorithm, then stop.

While this technique very often solves all the outstanding package dependencies,
it can fail in a number of common circumstances.

  • Conflicts are resolved by removing the package that is the target of the
    conflict. But now other packages that depend on this package have unresolved
    dependencies; the immediate resolver makes no attempt to fix them.

  • A dependency might not be satisfiable due to version restrictions and due to
    the limitation that only candidate versions are considered. For instance,
    say that versions 1.0 and 2.0 of fileutils are available, that the candidate
    version is 1.0, and that the package octopus declares a dependency “Depends:
    fileutils (>= 2.0)”. Immediate resolution is unable to resolve this
    dependency: it will never consider version 2.0 of the package, since that is
    not the candidate version.

The interactive dependency resolver can solve these situations and more. When
there are broken dependencies left over, or when immediate dependency resolution
is disabled, the interactive resolver will automatically start searching for a
solution. The next section describes how to use the interactive dependency
resolver.

  Resolving Dependencies Interactively

If a dependency problem arises that cannot be handled using the immediate
dependency resolver, aptitude can assist you in resolving it. As soon as a
problem occurs, a red bar will appear at the bottom of the screen with a summary
of aptitude's suggestion about how to fix it. For instance, in the following
screenshot, aptitude is indicating that it can resolve the situation by keeping
two packages at their current versions.

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
aptitude 0.3.3       #Broken: 1   Will free 48.6MB of disk space
i A   nautilus                                             2.10.1-4   2.10.1-4
i     nautilus-cd-burner                                   2.10.2-1.1 2.10.2-1.1
i A   nautilus-data                                        2.10.1-4   2.10.1-4
i     netspeed                                             0.12.1-1   0.12.1-1
i A   oaf                                                  0.6.10-3   0.6.10-3
i     pybliographer                                        1.2.6.2-1  1.2.6.2-1
i     rhythmbox                                            0.8.8-13   0.8.8-13
i     shermans-aquarium                                    3.0.1-1    3.0.1-1
idA   sound-juicer                                 -1733kB 2.10.1-3   2.10.1-3
GNOME 2 CD Ripper
sound-juicer will be removed.


The following packages depend on sound-juicer and will be broken by its
removal:


  * gnome-desktop-environment depends on sound-juicer

[1(1)/...] Suggest 2 keeps
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

As indicated at the bottom of the screen, you can view additional solutions by
pressing . and ,, apply the current solution by pressing !, and examine the
solution in more detail by pressing e. When you examine the current solution, a
screen similar to the following will appear:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
                Packages                          Resolve Dependencies
  --\ Keep the following packages at their current version:
    gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia                           [0.8.10-1 (unstable, now)]
    sound-juicer                                                [2.10.1-2 (now)]
















[1(1)/...] Suggest 2 keeps
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

You can access information about the package affected by an action by simply
pressing Enter while the package is highlighted. For a more detailed explanation
of why aptitude made a particular decision, you can highlight the element in the
list. When you do so, the lower half of the screen will display the dependency
which was resolved by aptitude's choice, along with every way in which this
dependency could have been resolved.

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
                Packages                          Resolve Dependencies
  --\ Keep the following packages at their current version:
    gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia                           [0.8.11-1 (unstable, now)]
    sound-juicer                                      [2.10.1-3 (unstable, now)]






cdparanoia plugin for GStreamer
sound-juicer depends upon gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia
--\ The following actions will resolve this dependency:
  -> Downgrade sound-juicer [2.10.1-3 (unstable, now) -> 0.6.1-2 (testing)]
  -> Remove sound-juicer [2.10.1-3 (unstable, now)]
  -> Cancel the removal of gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia
  -> Downgrade gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia [0.8.11-1 (unstable, now) -> 0.8.8-3 (tes



[1(1)/...] Suggest 2 keeps
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

You can guide the dependency resolver to a solution of which you approve by
approving or rejecting the individual actions of a solution. If you approve an
action, the resolver will choose it whenever possible, ignoring alternatives
(when there are several approved alternatives, any one of them could be chosen).
On the other hand, if you reject an action, the resolver will never choose that
action.

To reject an action, highlight it and press r; the rejection can be cancelled by
pressing r again. Similarly, select an action and press a to approve it; press a
again to restore its original state. You can undo either action by using Undo →
Undo (Control+u) while the resolver screen is active. If you cancel a rejection
or an approval, any solutions that were ignored will be available the next time
that you generate a new solution.

[Note] Note
       By default, the resolver rejects actions that change the state of held
       packages, or that install forbidden versions of packages. You can
       override these rejections, thus allowing the hold or forbidding to be
       automatically overridden, in the same way that you would override any
       other rejection. Setting the configuration option
       Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Allow-Break-Holds to true will disable this
       behavior, meaning that the resolver will always break holds (albeit at a
       penalty, see Aptitude::ProblemResolver::BreakHoldScore).

Rejected actions are colored red and marked with an “R”, while approved actions
are colored green and marked with an “A”. You can see this in the following
screenshot, where the action “keep gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia at its current
version” has been rejected, and the action “keep sound-juicer at its current
version” has been approved.

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
                Packages                          Resolve Dependencies
  --\ Keep the following packages at their current version:
R   gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia                           [0.8.11-1 (unstable, now)]
A   sound-juicer                                      [2.10.1-3 (unstable, now)]
















[1(1)/...] Suggest 2 keeps
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

Rejections and approvals only affect newly generated solutions. You can tell
when a new solution will be generated by examining the indicator in the lower
left hand corner of the screen: if there is a number in parentheses, it is the
number of solutions that have been generated. Thus, when the number outside the
parentheses and the number inside are identical (as above), pressing . will
generate a new solution. If there is no number in parentheses (for instance, the
indicator reads [1/5]), then there are no more solutions to generate. At any
time, you can select the last generated solution by pressing >, and the first
generated solution by pressing <.

[Important] Important
            The state of the problem resolver is discarded when you modify the
            state of any package. If you mark a package for installation, for
            upgrade, for removal, etc, the resolver will forget all of your
            rejections and approvals, as well as all the solutions that have
            been generated so far.

In addition to selecting actions in the list at the top of the screen, you can
also select them using the list in the bottom half. To access this list, either
click in it using the mouse or press Tab. Finally, to see the decisions that the
problem resolver took arranged in order, press o. This will give a list of the
dependencies that were resolved and the action taken to resolve them, as in the
following screenshot.

 Actions  Undo  Package  Resolver  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
                Packages                          Resolve Dependencies
  --\ gnome-desktop-environment depends upon sound-juicer
    -> Cancel the removal of sound-juicer
  --\ sound-juicer depends upon gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia
    -> Cancel the removal of gstreamer0.8-cdparanoia





GNOME 2 CD Ripper
gnome-desktop-environment depends upon sound-juicer
--\ The following actions will resolve this dependency:
  -> Remove gnome-desktop-environment [1:2.10.2.3 (unstable, testing, now)]
  -> Cancel the removal of sound-juicer
  -> Downgrade sound-juicer [2.10.1-3 (unstable, now) -> 0.6.1-2 (testing)]




[1(1)/...] Suggest 2 keeps
e: Examine  !: Apply  .: Next  ,: Previous

You can leave this display mode by pressing o again.

  Costs in the interactive dependency resolver

    Costs and cost components

The cost of a solution produced by the interactive dependency resolver is a
value that aptitude uses to determine how “bad” that solution is. Solutions that
are “better” are always displayed before solutions that are “worse”. The cost of
solutions is defined in the configuration option
Aptitude::ProblemResolver::SolutionCost.

Some typical costs are shown in Example 2.1, “Sample resolver costs”.

Example 2.1. Sample resolver costs

The default cost, sorting solutions by their safety cost, then by their apt pin
priority:

safety, priority

Remove as few packages as possible, then cancel as few actions as possible:

removals, canceled-actions

Sort solutions by the number of packages they remove plus twice the number of
actions they cancel.

removals + 2 * canceled-actions

As can be seen from the above examples, a cost is not necessarily a single
number. In fact, a cost consists of one or more cost components, each of which
is a number associated with the solution. When sorting solutions, the resolver
examines cost components in order, proceeding to later components only if the
earlier ones are equal. For instance, in the cost “removals, canceled-actions”,
solutions with fewer removals always appear before solutions with more removals,
regardless of how many canceled actions they have. However, solutions with the
same number of removals are sorted so that solutions with fewer canceled actions
appear first.

Cost components come in two flavors: basic cost components and compound cost
components.

Basic components simply name some property of the solution, such as “upgrades”
or “removals”. A list of built-in basic components provided by aptitude can be
found in Table 2.1, “Basic cost components”. You can also create your own cost
components using the add-to-cost-component and raise-cost-component hints; see
the section called “Configuring resolver hints” for details.

Each basic component is either a counter or a level. Counters count how many of
a solution's actions meet some condition (such as removing packages or
installing new packages), while levels associate a number with each action and
compute the highest number associated with any action in the solution.

Table 2.1. Basic cost components

┌────────────────────┬───────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│        Name        │ Type  │                     Description                     │
├────────────────────┼───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                    │       │Counts the number of holds that the solution breaks, │
│broken-holds        │Counter│if the resolver is allowed to break holds            │
│                    │       │(Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Allow-Break-Holds).      │
├────────────────────┼───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                    │       │Counts the number of pending actions that the        │
│canceled-actions    │Counter│solution cancels (keeping packages at their current  │
│                    │       │version).                                            │
├────────────────────┼───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│installs            │Counter│Counts the number of packages that the solution      │
│                    │       │installs.                                            │
├────────────────────┼───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│non-default-versions│Counter│Counts the number of versions that the solution      │
│                    │       │installs or upgrades from non-default sources.       │
├────────────────────┼───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                    │       │A value that increases as the apt pin priority of a  │
│priority            │Level  │version decreases. Specifically, this is computed by │
│                    │       │negating the pin priority (so, e.g., if the pin      │
│                    │       │priority is 500, this component will compute -500).  │
├────────────────────┼───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│removals            │Counter│Counts the number of packages that the solution      │
│                    │       │removes.                                             │
├────────────────────┼───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│removals-of-manual  │Counter│Counts the number of manually installed packages that│
│                    │       │the solution removes.                                │
├────────────────────┼───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                    │       │A broad heuristic that increases as actions become   │
│safety              │Level  │less “safe”; see the section called “Safety costs”   │
│                    │       │for details.                                         │
├────────────────────┼───────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│upgrades            │Counter│Counts the number of packages that the solution      │
│                    │       │upgrades.                                            │
└────────────────────┴───────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Compound components are built by combining the values of basic components. For
instance, removals + canceled-actions adds the components removal and
canceled-actions, resulting in a component that counts the number of removals
and canceled actions. Compound components combine counters by adding them
together and levels by taking their maximum value, as shown in Figure 2.11,
“Syntax of compound cost components”.

[Note] Note
       It is an error to add two levels, or to take the maximum of two counters,
       or to combine levels and counters in any way. For instance, the costs
       removals + safety and max(upgrades, installs) will be treated as errors
       and ignored by the resolver.^[13]

Figure 2.11. Syntax of compound cost components

Add two or more basic costs:

                [scale1]*cost1 + [scale2]*cost2 + ...


Take the maximum value of two or more basic costs:

                max([scale1]*cost1, [scale2]*cost2, ...)


Note that each individual basic component can be multiplied by a scaling factor
before it is combined with other components. This can be used to control the
trade-offs that the resolver makes between costs. For instance, a cost of
2*removals + 3*upgrades says that three removals are exactly as “bad” as two
upgrades. Solutions that contain four removals and one upgrade will be
considered equivalent to solutions containing one removal and three upgrades,
since both have a cost of eleven.

    Safety costs

Figure 2.12. Safety cost levels

Safety cost levels
[Safety cost levels diagram]

The safety cost component is a heuristic estimate of how “safe” or “unsafe” a
solution is. Safety costs can be thought of as a way of dividing solutions into
several numbered “levels”, where “less safe” levels are given higher numbers.
Figure 2.12, “Safety cost levels” shows how this works with aptitude's default
settings.

[Tip] Tip
      Safety cost levels are just one way to control the order in which
      dependency solutions are returned. See the section called “Costs in the
      interactive dependency resolver” for a full description of how to change
      the order in which aptitude sorts solutions.

By default, aptitude initializes the resolver with a “reasonable” set of safety
cost levels. They are:

Table 2.2. Default safety cost levels

┌──────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Cost │                 Description                  │              Configuration option               │
│level │                                              │                                                 │
├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│      │Solutions that include only “safe” actions    │                                                 │
│10,000│(installing the default target for a package  │Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Safe-Level,           │
│      │or keeping a package at its current version)  │Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Remove-Level          │
│      │and package removals.                         │                                                 │
├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│      │The solution that cancels all the user's      │                                                 │
│      │actions. It used to be higher than            │                                                 │
│10,000│Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Remove-Level, but  │Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Keep-All-Level        │
│      │removing packages was ranked higher than      │                                                 │
│      │keeping the same packages, even if the package│                                                 │
│      │was to be upgraded.                           │                                                 │
├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│40,000│Solutions that break holds set by the user or │Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Break-Hold-Level      │
│      │install forbidden versions.                   │                                                 │
├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│      │Solutions that install packages from          │                                                 │
│50,000│non-default versions (such as “experimental”, │Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Non-Default-Level     │
│      │for instance).                                │                                                 │
├──────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│60,000│Solutions that remove Essential packages.     │Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Remove-Essential-Level│
└──────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

If a solution qualifies for several safety cost levels, it will be placed in the
highest one, that is, the one that appears last. For example, a solution that
upgrades one package to its default version and breaks a hold on a second
package will be placed at level 40,000. You can adjust the levels of individual
versions using resolver hints; see the section called “Configuring resolver
hints” for details. The default levels are illustrated in Figure 2.12, “Safety
cost levels”.

Besides numbers you can also use the keywords “maximum” and “minimum” for cost
levels. They refer to the maximal respective minimal integer value possible on
the hardware architecture of your system.

  Configuring the interactive dependency resolver

    Configuring resolver hints

To improve the quality of the dependency solutions that you receive, you can
provide hints to the interactive dependency resolver. These hints can alter the
priorities of the resolver, biasing it more strongly in favor of one version or
package, or they can be used to “pre-load” the resolver with rejections and
approvals, as if you had entered the resolver and manually rejected or approved
various versions.

Hints are stored in the apt configuration file, /etc/apt/apt.conf, in the
configuration group “Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Hints” (see the section called
“Configuration file reference” for details on the configuration file).

Each resolver hint consists of an action, a target, and an optional version. A
hint is written like this: "action target [version]". To apply a resolver hint,
aptitude locates one or more packages using the value of target, chooses one or
more versions of those packages using the value of version, and finally performs
the given action.

The action field of a resolver hint may be one of the following:

 1. “approve”: Approve the version, as if the command Resolver → Toggle Approved
    (a) had been invoked on it.

 2. “reject”: Reject the version, as if the command Resolver → Toggle Rejected
    (r) had been invoked on it.

 3. “discard”: Discard every solution containing the version. Differs from
    “reject” in that it is not visible to the user and cannot be modified
    interactively.

 4. “increase-safety-cost-to number”: increase the safety cost of any solution
    that contains the version to number; if its safety cost is already higher
    than number, this hint has no effect. The safety cost can be used (and is
    used by default) to control the order in which solutions appear; see the
    section called “Costs and cost components” and the section called “Safety
    costs” for details.

    Several special cost levels can be chosen by name:

      a. conflict, discard: instead of changing the safety cost, discard
         solutions containing the version as if the “discard” hint had been
         applied.

      b. maximum: the highest safety cost.

      c. minimum: the lowest safety cost. All searches start at this cost, so
         “increasing” a version to this cost has no effect. However, this value
         can also be used when adjusting the predefined cost levels: for
         instance, setting Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Remove-Level to “minimum”
         will cause removed packages to have no effect on the safety cost of a
         solution.

    [Note] Note
           The increase-safety-cost-to hint is applied in addition to any
           default safety cost that is due to the selected action. For instance,
           a hint that increases the safety cost of “install hal from
           experimental” to 15,000 will have no effect, because that action
           already has a safety cost of 50,000 (assuming that this version of
           hal is not the default candidate version).

 5. “number”: add the given number to the version's score, biasing the resolver
    in favor of it or (with a negative number) away from it. For instance, the
    hint 200 emacs adds 200 to the score of emacs, whereas the hint -10 emacs
    subtracts 10 from its score.

If target field of a resolver hint contains a question mark (“?”) or tilde
(“~”), it is considered to be a search pattern and all matching package versions
are considered. Otherwise, it is considered to be the name of a package to
select. So the target “g++” will select only the g++ package, but the target
“?section(non-free)” will select any package in the non-free section. See the
section called “Search patterns” for more information on search patterns.

If the version field is not present, then all versions of the package are
affected by the hint. Otherwise, it may have any of the following forms:

 1. “/archive”: the hint only affects versions that are available in the given
    archive.

 2. “<version”: the hint only affects versions whose version number is less than
    version.

 3. “<=version”: the hint only affects versions whose version number is less
    than or equal to version.

 4. “=version”: the hint only affects versions whose version number is version.

 5. “<>version”: the hint only affects versions whose version number is not
    version.

 6. “>=version”: the hint only affects versions whose version number is greater
    than or equal to version.

 7. “>version”: the hint only affects versions whose version number is greater
    than version.

 8. “:UNINST”: instead of affecting any of the versions of target, the hint
    affects the decision to remove target. For instance,
    “Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Hints { "reject aptitude :UNINST"; };” will
    prevent the resolver from attempting to remove aptitude.

 9. “version”: the hint only affects versions whose version number is version.

Search patterns

When you search for a package or set a display limit in aptitude, the string you
enter is known as a “search pattern”. While the most basic usage of search
patterns is to match packages by name, aptitude allows you to create much more
complex searches. In addition to the visual interface, some command-line
operations can use search patterns; see Command-line reference for details.

A search pattern consists of one or more conditions (sometimes known as
“terms”); packages match the pattern if they match all of its terms. Terms
generally start with a question mark (“?”), followed by the name of the match
term, which describes the search that the term performs: for instance, the term
?name matches package names, while the term ?version matches package versions.
Finally, any additional parameters to the search term are placed in parentheses
(see the documentation of individual terms for details of what each term's
parameters mean).

[Note] Note
       Text with no leading “?” also forms a search pattern: aptitude will treat
       each word (or quoted string) as the argument to a ?name pattern, which
       searches for a package whose name matches the text when the text is
       interpreted as a regular expression.

[Warning] Warning
          The behavior of aptitude when given a search pattern without a leading
          “?” (or “~”) is provided as a convenience for interactive use and will
          change in future releases; scripts that invoke aptitude should
          explicitly name the search strategy they want to use. That is, scripts
          should search for “?name(coq)” rather than “coq”).

  Searching for strings

Many search terms take a string as a parameter and match it against one or more
fields of a package. Strings can be entered either with or without double quotes
(“"”), so “?name(scorch)” and “?name("scorch")” will perform the same search. If
you enter a search string using double quotes, you can include a literal
double-quote in the search string by placing a backslash (“\”) immediately
before it: for instance, “?description("\"easy\"")” will match any package whose
description contains the string “"easy"”.

If you enter a “bare” string, one not surrounded by double quotes, then aptitude
will consider the string to have “ended” when it encounters the closing
parenthesis or the comma before a second argument to the search term. ^[14] To
remove the special meaning of these characters, place a tilde (“~”) directly
before them. For instance, “?description(etc))” is a syntax error, because the
first “)” ends the ?description term, and the second “)” does not correspond to
any “(”. In contrast, “?description(etc~))” matches any package whose
description contains the text “etc)”. There are additional considerations if you
are using the shorthand notation for a term; see the section called “Shorthand
for search terms” for details.

Most textual searches (for package names, descriptions, etc) are performed using
case-insensitive regular expressions. A regular expression will match against a
field if any portion of the field matches the expression; for instance,
“ogg[0-9]” will match “libogg5”, “ogg123”, and “theogg4u”. Some characters have
a special meaning within regular expressions ^[15] , so if you want to match
them in searches you need to backslash-escape them: for instance, to find “g++”,
you should use the pattern “g\+\+”.

The characters “!” and “|” have special meanings within search patterns. In
order to include these characters in an unquoted string, you can place a tilde
(“~”) directly before them. For instance, to match packages whose description
contains either “grand” or “oblique”, use the pattern
“?description(grand~|oblique)”. However, you will probably find it more
convenient to simply use a quoted string in these cases:
“?description("grand|oblique")”.

  Shorthand for search terms

Some search terms can be written using “short” forms, which consist of a tilde
(“~”) followed by a single character that identifies the term, and finally the
arguments (if any) to the term. For instance, the short form of ?name(aptitude)
is ~n aptitude.

When writing a term using its short form, tilde characters and “whitespace” --
that is, space characters, tabs, and so on -- will break the term off and start
a new term. For instance, “~mDaniel Burrows” will match any package whose
maintainer field contains “Daniel” and whose name contains “Burrows”, while
“~i~napt” matches installed packages whose name contains apt. To include
whitespace characters in the search expression, you can either place a tilde in
front of it (as in Daniel~ Burrows) or place quotation marks around it (as in
"Debian Project" or even Debian" "Project). Inside a quoted string, the
backslash character (“\”) can be used to cancel the special meaning of the
quotation mark: for instance, ~d"\"email" will match any package whose
description contains a quotation mark followed immediately by email. ^[16]

[Note] Note
       Question marks (“?”) will not end the short form of a term, even if they
       are followed by the name of a search term. For instance,
       “~napt?priority(required)” will match all packages whose name matches the
       regular expression “apt?priority(required)”. To combine a short query
       term with a search term specified by name, add one or more spaces between
       the two terms, as in “~napt ?priority(required)”, or place quotation
       marks around the text (if any) following the short form of a term, as in
       “~n"apt"?priority(required)”.

Table 2.3, “Quick guide to search terms” lists the short form of each search
term.

  Searches and versions

By default, a pattern matches a package if any version of the package matches
the pattern. However, some patterns will restrict their sub-patterns to only
match against some versions of a package. For instance, the search term
?depends(pattern) will select any package that depends on a package matching
pattern. However, pattern will only be checked against the versions of the
package that actually satisfy a dependency. This means that if foo depends on
bar (>= 3.0) and versions 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 of bar are available, then in the
search pattern ?depends(?version(2\.0)), only versions 3.0 and 4.0 will be
tested against ?version(2\.0), and hence foo will not be found by this search.

It matters which versions are checked because, as in the example above, some
patterns will match one version but not another. For instance, the pattern
?installed will only match the version of the package (if any) that is currently
installed. Similarly, the pattern ?maintainer(maintainer) will only match
versions that have the given maintainer. Normally all versions of a package have
the same maintainer, but this is not always the case; in fact, any search
pattern that examines the fields of a package (other than its name, of course)
will behave this way, because all the fields of a package can change between
versions.

To test a pattern against all the versions of a package, even if the pattern
would normally be tested against only some of the versions, use the ?widen term.
For instance, ?depends(?widen(?version(2\.0))) will match any package A that
depends on a package B, where B has a version matching 2.0, regardless of
whether that version actually satisfies A's dependency. On the other hand, the
?narrow term restricts the versions that its sub-pattern is matched against:
?narrow(?installed, ?depends(?version(ubuntu))) will match any package whose
installed version has a dependency that can be satisfied by a package whose
version string contains “ubuntu”.

[Note] Note
       There is a subtle, but important, distinction between matching a pattern
       against a package, and matching it against all the versions of that
       package. When a pattern is matched against a package, each of its terms
       is matched against the package, and so each term will match if any
       version of the package matches. In contrast, when a pattern is matched
       against each version of a package, it will successfully match if it
       matches when all its terms are matched against the same version of the
       package.

       For example: suppose that version 3.0-1 of the package aardvark is
       installed, but that version 4.0-1 is available. Then the search
       expression ?version(4\.0-1)?installed matches aardvark, because
       ?version(4\.0-1) matches against version 4.0-1 of aardvark, while
       ?installed matches against version 3.0-1. On the other hand, this
       expression does not match against all the versions of aardvark, because
       no single version is installed and also has a version number of 4.0-1.

  Explicit search targets

Some particularly complex searches can be expressed in aptitude using explicit
targets. In normal search expressions, there is no way to refer to the package
or version that is currently being tested. For instance, suppose that you want
to search for all packages P that depend on a second package Q such that Q
recommends P. Clearly you need to start out with a ?depends(...) term. But the
term filling in the ... needs to somehow select packages that are identical to
the one being matched against ?depends. When describing the goal above, I dealt
with this by giving the packages names, calling them P and Q; terms with
explicit targets do exactly the same thing. ^[17]

An explicit target is introduced by the ?for term:

Figure 2.13. Syntax of the ?for term

?for variable: pattern

This behaves exactly like pattern, but variable can be used within pattern to
refer to the package or version that pattern is being matched against. You can
use variable in two ways:

 1. The term ?= will match exactly the package or version indicated by the given
    variable. Specifically: if the corresponding ?for term is limited to a
    particular version, then ?= will match either that version (if ?= is
    limited) or the whole package; otherwise it will match any version of the
    package.

    See Example 2.2, “ Use of the ?= term. ” for an example of how to use ?=.

 2. The term ?bind(variable, pattern) will match any package or version if the
    value of variable matches against pattern.

    For ?-style terms, a shorthand form is available. The expression
    ?bind(variable, ?term[(args)]) can be replaced by ?variable:term(args).

    See Example 2.3, “Use of the ?bind term” for an example of how to use ?bind.

  Search term reference

Table 2.3, “Quick guide to search terms” provides a brief summary of all the
search terms provided by aptitude. A full description of each term can be found
below.

Table 2.3. Quick guide to search terms

┌────────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┬──────────────────┐
│           Long form            │         Short form         │   Description    │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select the package│
│                                │                            │bound to variable;│
│?=variable                      │                            │see the section   │
│                                │                            │called “Explicit  │
│                                │                            │search targets”.  │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select any package│
│?not(pattern)                   │!pattern                    │that does not     │
│                                │                            │match pattern.    │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │that have been    │
│?action(action)                 │~aaction                    │marked for the    │
│                                │                            │given action      │
│                                │                            │(e.g., “install”  │
│                                │                            │or “upgrade”).    │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?all-versions(pattern)          │                            │whose versions all│
│                                │                            │match pattern.    │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select any package│
│?and(pattern1, pattern2)        │pattern1 pattern2           │that matches both │
│                                │                            │pattern1 and      │
│                                │                            │pattern2.         │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?any-version(pattern)           │                            │for which at least│
│                                │                            │one version       │
│                                │                            │matches pattern.  │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │for the given     │
│                                │                            │architecture (such│
│?architecture(architecture)     │~rarchitecture              │as “amd64”, or    │
│                                │                            │“all”). Special   │
│                                │                            │values: native and│
│                                │                            │foreign.          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?archive(archive)               │~Aarchive                   │from the given    │
│                                │                            │archive (such as  │
│                                │                            │“unstable”).      │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?automatic                      │~M                          │that were         │
│                                │                            │automatically     │
│                                │                            │installed.        │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Selects anything  │
│                                │                            │if variable       │
│?bind(variable, pattern)        │?variable:term-name[(args)] │matches pattern;  │
│                                │                            │see the section   │
│                                │                            │called “Explicit  │
│                                │                            │search targets”.  │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?broken                         │~b                          │that have a broken│
│                                │                            │dependency.       │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select package    │
│?broken-depType                 │~BdepType                   │that have a broken│
│                                │                            │dependency of the │
│                                │                            │given depType.    │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │that have a broken│
│?broken-depType(pattern)        │~DB[depType:]pattern        │dependency of the │
│                                │                            │given depType     │
│                                │                            │matching pattern. │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │that a package    │
│?broken-reverse-depType(pattern)│~RBdepType:pattern          │matching pattern  │
│                                │                            │declares a broken │
│                                │                            │dependency of type│
│                                │                            │depType.          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?conflicts(pattern)             │~Cpattern                   │that conflict with│
│                                │                            │a package matching│
│                                │                            │pattern.          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?config-files                   │~c                          │that were removed │
│                                │                            │but not purged.   │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Match packages    │
│                                │                            │that declare a    │
│?depType(pattern)               │~D[depType:]pattern         │dependency of type│
│                                │                            │depType on a      │
│                                │                            │package matching  │
│                                │                            │pattern.          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?description(description)       │~ddescription               │whose description │
│                                │                            │matches           │
│                                │                            │description.      │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select essential  │
│                                │                            │packages, those   │
│?essential                      │~E                          │with Essential:   │
│                                │                            │yes in their      │
│                                │                            │control files.    │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│?exact-name(name)               │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │named name.       │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│?false                          │~F                          │Select no         │
│                                │                            │packages.         │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │that match pattern│
│                                │                            │with variable     │
│                                │                            │bound to the      │
│?for variable: pattern          │                            │package being     │
│                                │                            │matched; see the  │
│                                │                            │section called    │
│                                │                            │“Explicit search  │
│                                │                            │targets”.         │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │that are not      │
│?garbage                        │~g                          │required by any   │
│                                │                            │manually installed│
│                                │                            │package.          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│?installed                      │~i                          │Select installed  │
│                                │                            │packages.         │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?maintainer(maintainer)         │~mmaintainer                │maintained by     │
│                                │                            │maintainer.       │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │with a multi-arch │
│                                │                            │capability of     │
│?multiarch(multiarch)           │                            │multiarch (that   │
│                                │                            │is, either        │
│                                │                            │“foreign”, “same”,│
│                                │                            │“allowed”, or     │
│                                │                            │“none”).          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │for which a single│
│?narrow(filter, pattern)        │~S filter pattern           │version matches   │
│                                │                            │both filter and   │
│                                │                            │pattern.          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?name(name)                     │~nname, name                │with the given    │
│                                │                            │name.             │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│?new                            │~N                          │Select new        │
│                                │                            │packages.         │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Match installed   │
│?obsolete                       │~o                          │packages that     │
│                                │                            │cannot be         │
│                                │                            │downloaded.       │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?or(pattern1, pattern2)         │pattern1 | pattern2         │that match        │
│                                │                            │pattern1,         │
│                                │                            │pattern2, or both.│
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?origin(origin)                 │~Oorigin                    │with the given    │
│                                │                            │origin.           │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?provides(pattern)              │~Ppattern                   │that provide a    │
│                                │                            │package matching  │
│                                │                            │pattern.          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?priority(priority)             │~ppriority                  │with the given    │
│                                │                            │priority.         │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │that are the      │
│                                │                            │targets of a      │
│?reverse-depType(pattern)       │~R[depType:]pattern         │dependency of type│
│                                │                            │depType declared  │
│                                │                            │by a package      │
│                                │                            │matching pattern. │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │that are the      │
│                                │                            │targets of a      │
│?reverse-broken-depType(pattern)│~RBdepType:pattern          │broken dependency │
│                                │                            │of type depType   │
│                                │                            │declared by a     │
│                                │                            │package matching  │
│                                │                            │pattern.          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│?section(section)               │~ssection                   │Select packages in│
│                                │                            │the given section.│
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │whose source      │
│?source-package(name)           │~ename                      │package name      │
│                                │                            │matches the       │
│                                │                            │regular expression│
│                                │                            │name.             │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │whose source      │
│?source-version(version)        │                            │version matches   │
│                                │                            │the regular       │
│                                │                            │expression        │
│                                │                            │version.          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?tag(tag)                       │~Gtag                       │that have the     │
│                                │                            │given debtags tag.│
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Full-text search  │
│?term(keyword)                  │                            │for packages that │
│                                │                            │contain the given │
│                                │                            │keyword.          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Full-text search  │
│                                │                            │for packages that │
│?term-prefix(keyword)           │                            │contain a keyword │
│                                │                            │that begins with  │
│                                │                            │the given keyword.│
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│?true                           │~T                          │Select all        │
│                                │                            │packages.         │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?task(task)                     │~ttask                      │that are in the   │
│                                │                            │given task.       │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│?upgradable                     │~U                          │that are installed│
│                                │                            │and can be        │
│                                │                            │upgraded.         │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │that are marked   │
│?user-tag                       │                            │with a user-tag   │
│                                │                            │matching the      │
│                                │                            │regular expression│
│                                │                            │user-tag.         │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select packages   │
│                                │                            │whose version     │
│                                │                            │matches version   │
│?version(version)               │~Vversion                   │(special values:  │
│                                │                            │CURRENT,          │
│                                │                            │CANDIDATE, and    │
│                                │                            │TARGET).          │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│?virtual                        │~v                          │Select virtual    │
│                                │                            │packages.         │
├────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│                                │                            │Select versions   │
│                                │                            │for which pattern │
│                                │                            │matches any       │
│                                │                            │version of the    │
│?widen(pattern)                 │~Wpattern                   │corresponding     │
│                                │                            │package,          │
│                                │                            │discarding local  │
│                                │                            │version           │
│                                │                            │restrictions.     │
└────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┴──────────────────┘

name

        Matches packages whose names match the regular expression name. This is
        the “default” search mode and is used for patterns that don't start with
        ~.

        [Note] Note
               To match packages whose names contain several different
               substrings, use the ?name term (described below); for instance,
               “?name(apti)?name(tude)” will match any package whose name
               contains both “apti” and “tude”.

?=variable

        Matches packages that correspond to the value of variable, which must be
        bound by an enclosing ?for. For instance, ?for x: ?depends( ?recommends(
        ?=x ) ) will match any package x that depends on a package which
        recommends x.

        For instance, the following search expression matches packages that
        conflict with themselves:

        Example 2.2.  Use of the ?= term.

        ?for x: ?conflicts(?=x)

        See the section called “Explicit search targets” for more information.

?not(pattern), !pattern

        Matches packages which do not match the pattern pattern. For instance,
        “?not(?broken)” selects packages that are not “broken”.

        [Note] Note
               To include a “!” in a search string, it must be “escaped” by
               placing a tilde (“~”) in front of it; otherwise, aptitude will
               consider it to be part of a ?not term. For instance, to select
               packages whose description contains “extra!”, use
               “?description(extra~!)”.

?and(pattern1, pattern2), pattern1 pattern2

        Matches packages that match both pattern1 and pattern2.

?or(pattern1, pattern2), pattern1 | pattern2

        Matches packages that match either pattern1 or pattern2.

        [Note] Note
               To use the character “|” in a regular expression, it must be
               “escaped” to prevent aptitude from creating an OR term from it:
               “~|”.

(pattern)

        Matches pattern. For instance, “opengl (perl|python)” matches any
        package whose name contains opengl, and also contains either perl or
        python.

?action(action), ~aaction

        Matches packages upon which the given action is going to be performed.
        action can be “install”, “upgrade”, “downgrade”, “remove”, “purge”,
        “hold” (tests whether a package has been placed on hold), or “keep”
        (tests whether a package will be unchanged).

        [Note] Note
               Note that this only tests whether an action is actually queued up
               to be performed on a package, not whether it could be performed.
               Thus, for instance, ?action(upgrade) matches exactly those
               packages that you have already decided to upgrade, not packages
               which could be upgraded in the future (for that, use
               ?upgradable).

?all-versions(pattern)

        Matches any package whose versions all match the given expression. Each
        version of a package will be separately tested against pattern, and the
        package will match if all of its versions match. Packages without
        versions, such as virtual packages, will always be matched by this
        search term.

        This term may not be used in a context in which the versions to match
        against have already been narrowed, such as within ?depends or ?narrow.
        However, it may always be used within ?widen.

?any-version(pattern)

        Matches a package if any one of its versions matches the enclosed
        pattern. This is the dual to ?all-versions.

        This term may not be used in a context in which the versions to match
        against have already been narrowed, such as within ?depends or ?narrow.
        However, it may always be used within ?widen.

        [Note] Note
               This term is closely related to ?narrow. In fact,
               ?any-version(pattern1 pattern2) is exactly the same as
               ?narrow(pattern1, pattern2).

        [Note] Note
               To be precise, as with any other pattern, it is not packages but
               versions of the packages which are matched. For “aptitude search”
               and other uses it does not make much difference, but “aptitude
               versions” will only show the versions that match, not all
               versions of the package for which any version matches. For that,
               use an enclosing ?widen.

?architecture(architecture-spec), ~rarchitecture-spec

        Matches package versions for the given architecture-spec. For instance,
        “?architecture(amd64)” matches amd64 packages, while
        “?architecture(all)” matches arch-independent packages.

        It also accepts the special values native and foreign, and architecture
        wildcards (e.g. linux-any or any-amd64), as specified in Policy (“11.1
        Architecture specification strings”).

?archive(archive), ~Aarchive

        Matches package versions which are available from an archive that
        matches the regular expression archive. For instance,
        “?archive(testing)” matches any package available from the testing
        archive.

?automatic, ~M

        Matches packages which were automatically installed.

?bind(variable, pattern), ?variable:term-name[(args)]

        Matches any package or version if the given pattern matches the package
        or version bound to variable, which must be defined in an enclosing
        ?for.

        Example 2.3. Use of the ?bind term

        ?for x: ?depends(?depends(?for z: ?bind(x, ?depends(?=z))))

        ?for x: ?depends(?depends(?for z: ?x:depends(?=z)))

        The two search patterns in the above example both match any package x
        such that x depends on a package y which in turn depends on a package z
        such that x also depends directly on z. The first pattern uses ?bind
        directly, while the second one uses an equivalent shorthand syntax.

        See the section called “Explicit search targets” for more information.

?broken, ~b

        Matches packages that are “broken”: they have an unfulfilled dependency,
        predependency, breaks, or conflict.

?broken-depType, ~BdepType

        Matches packages which have an unfulfilled (“broken”) dependency of the
        given depType. depType can be “depends”, “predepends”, “recommends”,
        “suggests”, “breaks”, “conflicts”, or “replaces”.

?broken-depType(pattern), ~DB[depType:]pattern

        Matches packages with an unsatisfied dependency of type depType on a
        package matching pattern. depType may be any one of the dependency types
        listed in the documentation of ?broken-depType.

?conflicts(pattern), ~Cpattern

        Matches packages which conflict with a package matching the given
        pattern. For instance, “?conflicts(?maintainer(dburrows@debian.org))”
        matches any package which conflicts with a package I maintain.

?config-files, ~c

        Matches packages which have been removed, but whose configuration files
        remain on the system (ie, they were removed but not purged).

?depType(pattern), ~D[depType:]pattern

        depType may be any one of the dependency types given in the
        documentation of ?broken-depType, as well as provides: for instance,
        ?depends(libpng3) will match any package that depends on libpng3. If the
        short form (~D) is used and depType is not present, it defaults to
        depends.

        If depType is “provides”, matches packages that provide a package
        matching pattern (the equivalent of ?provides). Otherwise, matches
        packages which declare a dependency of type depType upon a package
        version which matches pattern.

?description(description), ~ddescription

        Matches packages whose description matches the regular expression
        description.

?essential, ~E

        Matches Essential packages.

?exact-name(name)

        Matches packages named name. This is similar to ?name, but the name must
        match exactly. For instance, the following pattern will match only the
        package apt; with ?name, it would also match aptitude, uvccapture, etc.

        Example 2.4. Use of the ?exact-name term

        ?exact-name(apt)

?false, ~F

        This term does not match any package. ^[18]

?for variable: pattern

        Matches pattern, but the given variable may be used inside pattern to
        refer to the package or package version this term to.

        You can use variable in two ways. To apply a ?-style term to the
        variable, write ?variable:term-name(args); for instance,
        ?x:depends(apt). In addition, the term ?=variable will select any
        package or version that matches the value of the given variable.

        For instance, the following term will match any package x that both
        depends and recommends a second package y.

        Example 2.5. Use of the ?for term

        ?for x: ?depends( ?for y: ?x:recommends( ?=y ) )

        See the section called “Explicit search targets” for more information.

?garbage, ~g

        Matches packages which are not installed, or which were automatically
        installed and are not depended upon by any installed package.

?installed, ~i

        Matches package versions which are currently installed.

        Since all versions are tested by default, this normally matches packages
        which are currently installed.

?maintainer(maintainer), ~mmaintainer

        Matches packages whose Maintainer field matches the regular expression
        maintainer. For instance, “?maintainer(joeyh)” will find all packages
        maintained by Joey Hess.

?multiarch(multiarch)

        Matches packages with the multi-arch capability specified by multiarch.
        For instance, “?multiarch(foreign)” will find all packages which can
        satisfy dependencies of packages for another architecture.
        “?multiarch(none)” will select packages with no multi-arch capability.

?narrow(filter, pattern), ~S filter pattern

        This term “narrows” the search to package versions matching filter. In
        particular, it matches any package version which matches both filter and
        pattern. The string value of the match is the string value of pattern.

?name(name), ~nname

        Matches packages whose name matches the regular expression name. For
        instance, most of the packages that match “?name(^lib)” are libraries of
        one sort or another.

?new, ~N

        Matches packages which are “new”: that is, they have been added to the
        archive since the last time the list of packages was cleared using
        Actions → Forget new packages (f) or the command-line action forget-new.

?obsolete, ~o

        This term matches any installed package which is not available in any
        version from any archive. These packages appear as “Obsolete or Locally
        Installed” in the visual interface.

?origin(origin), ~Oorigin

        Matches package versions whose origin matches the regular expression
        origin. For instance, “!?origin(debian)” will find any unofficial
        packages on your system (packages not from the Debian archive).

?provides(pattern), ~Ppattern

        Matches package versions which provide a package that matches the
        pattern. For instance, “?provides(mail-transport-agent)” will match all
        the packages that provide “mail-transport-agent”.

?priority(priority), ~ppriority

        Matches packages whose priority is priority; priority must be extra,
        important, optional, required, or standard. For instance,
        “?priority(required)” matches packages whose priority is “required”.

?reverse-depType(pattern), ~R[depType:]pattern

        depType may be either “provides” or one of the dependency types given in
        the documentation of ?broken-depType. If depType is not present, it
        defaults to depends.

        If depType is “provides”, matches packages whose name is provided by a
        package version matching pattern. Otherwise, matches packages which a
        package version matching pattern declares a dependency of type depType
        upon.

?reverse-broken-depType(pattern), ?broken-reverse-depType(pattern),
~RB[depType:]pattern

        depType may be either “provides” or one of the dependency types given in
        the documentation of ?broken-depType. If depType is not present, it
        defaults to depends.

        Matches packages which a package version matching pattern declares an
        unsatisfied dependency of type depType upon.

?section(section), ~ssection

        Matches packages whose section matches the regular expression section.

?source-package(name), ~ename

        Matches packages whose source package name matches the regular
        expression name.

?source-version(version)

        Matches packages whose source version matches the regular expression
        version.

?tag(tag), ~Gtag

        Matches packages whose Tag field matches the regular expression tag. For
        instance, the pattern ?tag(game::strategy) would match strategy games.

        For more information on tags and debtags, see
        http://debtags.alioth.debian.org.

?task(task), ~ttask

        Matches packages that appear in a task whose name matches the regular
        expression task.

?term(keyword)

        This term performs a full-text search for keyword in the apt package
        cache. When used with “aptitude search”, Search → Limit Display (l) in
        the curses front-end, or typed into a package search box in the GTK+
        front-end, this term will allow aptitude to accelerate the search using
        a Xapian index.

?term-prefix(keyword)

        This term performs a full-text search for any keyword beginning with
        keyword in the apt package cache. When used with “aptitude search”,
        Search → Limit Display (l) in the curses front-end, or typed into a
        package search box in the GTK+ front-end, this term will allow aptitude
        to accelerate the search using a Xapian index.

        This is similar to ?term, but matches extensions of the keyword. For
        instance, the following search pattern will match any package indexed
        under the keywords hour, hourglass, hourly, and so on:

        Example 2.6. Use of the ?term-prefix term

        ?term-prefix(hour)

?true, ~T

        This term matches any package. For instance,
        “?installed?provides(?true)” matches installed packages which provide
        any package.

?upgradable, ~U

        This term matches any installed package which can be upgraded.

        [Note] Note
               Note that this only tests whether there are upgrades available
               for a package, not whether an upgrade could be performed (with
               actions such as safe-upgrade or full-upgrade).

               For instance, there can be upgrades available for several
               packages, but maybe the upgraded versions of a subset conflict
               with each other, so they cannot be co-installed or not all of
               them upgraded at the same time.

?user-tag(tag)

        This term matches any package that is marked with a user-tag matching
        the regular expression tag.

?version(version), ~Vversion

        Matches any package version whose version number matches the regular
        expression version, with the exceptions noted below. For instance,
        “?version(debian)” matches packages whose version contains “debian”.

        The following values of version are treated specially. To search for
        version numbers containing these values, preface the value with a
        backslash; for instance, to find packages whose version number contains
        CURRENT, search for \CURRENT.

           • CURRENT matches the currently installed version of a package, if
             any.

           • CANDIDATE matches the version, if any, of the package that will be
             installed if you press + on the package or run aptitude install on
             it.

           • TARGET matches the version of a package that is currently targeted
             for installation, if any.

?virtual, ~v

        Matches any package which is purely virtual: that is, its name is
        provided by a package, but no package of that name exists. For instance,
        “?virtual?reverse-provides(?installed)” matches virtual packages which
        are provided by any installed package.

?widen(pattern), ~Wpattern

        “Widens” the match: if the versions to match against have been limited
        by an enclosing term (such as ?depends), these limits are dropped. Thus,
        ?widen(pattern) matches a package version if pattern matches any version
        of that package.

Customizing aptitude

  Customizing the package list

The package list can be heavily customized: how packages are displayed, how the
package hierarchy is formed, how packages are sorted, and even how the display
is organized are all open to change.

    Customizing how packages are displayed

This section describes how to configure the contents and format of the package
list, status line, and header line, as well as the output of aptitude search.

The format of each of these locations is defined by a “format string”. A format
string is a string of text containing %-escapes such as %p, %S, and so on. The
resulting output is created by taking the text and replacing the %-escapes
according to their meanings (given below).

A %-escape can either have a fixed size, in which case it is always replaced by
the same amount of text (with extra space characters added to fill it out as
necessary), or it can be “expandable”, meaning that it takes up the space that
is not claimed by fixed-size columns. If there are several expandable columns,
the extra space is divided evenly between them.

All %-escapes come with a default size and/or expandability. The size of a
%-escape can be changed by writing it between the % and the character
identifying the escape; for instance, %20V generates the candidate version of
the package, 20 characters wide. Placing a question mark (?) between the % and
the character identifying the escape causes the column's “basic” width to vary
depending on its content. Note that the resulting columns might not line up
vertically!

If you want a particular %-escape to be expandable, even though it normally has
a fixed width, place a pound sign (ie, “#”) immediately after it. For instance,
to display the candidate version of a package, no matter how long it is, use the
format string %V#. You can also place # after something that is not a %-escape;
aptitude will “expand” the text preceding the # by inserting extra spaces after
it.

In summary, the syntax of a %-escape is:

%[width][?]code[#]

The configuration variables Aptitude::UI::Package-Display-Format,
Aptitude::UI::Package-Header-Format, and Aptitude::UI::Package-Status-Format
define the default formats the package list, the header at the top of the
package list, and the status line below the package list respectively. To change
how the results of an aptitude search command are displayed, use the -F option.

The following %-escapes are available in format strings:

[Note] Note
       Some of the descriptions below refer to “the package”. In the GUI, this
       is either the package being displayed or the currently selected package;
       in the command-line search, this is the package being displayed.

 Escape       Name       Default size  Expandable          Description
                                                  This is not really an escape;
%%       Literal %       1             No         it simply inserts a percent
                                                  sign into the output at the
                                                  point at which it occurs.
                                                  In some circumstances, a
                                                  display format string will
                                                  have “parameters”: for
                                                  instance, in the command-line
%#number Parameter       Variable      No         search, the groups matched by
         Replacement                              the search are used as
                                                  parameters when displaying the
                                                  result. This format code will
                                                  be replaced by the parameter
                                                  indicated by number.
                                                  A single-character flag
                                                  summarizing any action to be
%a       Action Flag     1             No         performed on the package, as
                                                  described in Figure 2.10,
                                                  “Values of the “action” flag”.
                                                  A somewhat more verbose
%A       Action          10            No         description of the action to
                                                  be performed on the package.
                                                  If there are no broken
                                                  packages, produces nothing.
%B       Broken Count    12            No         Otherwise, produces a string
                                                  such as “Broken: 10”
                                                  describing the number of
                                                  broken packages.
                                                  A single-character flag
         Current State                            summarizing the current state
%c       Flag            1             No         of the package, as described
                                                  in Figure 2.9, “Values of the
                                                  “current state” flag”.
                                                  A more verbose description of
%C       Current State   11            No         the current state of the
                                                  package.
%d       Description     40            Yes        The package's short
                                                  description.
%D       Package Size    8             No         The size of the package file
                                                  containing the package.
                                                  Outputs the string of the
%E       Architecture    10            No         architecture, for example
                                                  “amd64”.
                                                  Outputs the source package,
%e       Source          30            No         for example “aptitude” for
                                                  “aptitude-doc-en”.
%H       Hostname        15            No         The name of the computer on
                                                  which aptitude is running.
                                                  Displays the highest priority
                                                  assigned to a package version;
%i       Pin priority    4             No         for packages, displays the
                                                  priority of the version which
                                                  will be forced to be installed
                                                  (if any).
                                                  The (estimated) amount of
%I       Installed Size  8             No         space the package takes up on
                                                  disk.
%m       Maintainer      30            Yes        The maintainer of the package.
                                                  If the package is
%M       Automatic Flag  1             No         automatically installed,
                                                  outputs “A”; otherwise,
                                                  outputs nothing.
                         The length of            Outputs the version of
%n       Program Version “0.8.13”.     No         aptitude that is running,
                                                  currently “0.8.13”.
%N       Program Name    The length of No         Outputs the name of the
                         the name.                program; usually “aptitude”.
                                                  If no packages are going to be
                                                  installed, outputs nothing.
                                                  Otherwise, outputs a string
                                                  describing the total size of
%o       Download Size   17            No         all the package files which
                                                  will be installed (an estimate
                                                  of how much needs to be
                                                  downloaded); for instance, “DL
                                                  size: 1000B”.
                                                  Outputs a string of the origin
%O       Origin          30            No         of the package, for example
                                                  “Debian:unstable [amd64]”.
                                                  Outputs the name of the
                                                  package. When a package is
                                                  displayed in a tree context,
%p       Package Name    30            Yes        the name of the package will
                                                  be indented, if possible,
                                                  according to its depth in the
                                                  tree.
%P       Priority        9             No         Outputs the priority of the
                                                  package.
         Reverse Depends                          Outputs the approximate number
%r       Count           2             No         of installed packages which
                                                  depend upon the package.
                                                  Outputs an abbreviated
%R       Abbreviated     3             No         description of the package's
         Priority                                 priority: for instance,
                                                  “Important” becomes “Imp”.
%s       Section         10            No         Outputs the section of the
                                                  package.
%S       Trust Status    1             No         If the package is untrusted,
                                                  displays the letter "U".
%t       Archive         10            Yes        The archive in which the
                                                  package is found.
                                                  Outputs “*” if the package is
                                                  tagged, nothing
%T       Tagged (and     30            No         otherwise.^[19]
         user-tags)
                                                  This field also includes
                                                  user-tags.
                                                  If the scheduled actions will
                                                  alter the amount of space used
         Disk Usage                               on the disk, outputs a
%u       Change          30            No         description of the change in
                                                  disk space; for instance,
                                                  “Will use 100MB of disk
                                                  space.”
                                                  Outputs the currently
                                                  installed version of the
%v       Current Version 14            No         package, or <none> if the
                                                  package is not currently
                                                  installed.
                                                  Outputs the version of the
                                                  package which would be
         Candidate                                installed if Package → Install
%V       Version         14            No         (+) were issued on the
                                                  package, or <none> if the
                                                  package is not currently
                                                  available.
                                                  Outputs how much additional
                                                  space will be used or how much
%Z       Size Change     9             No         space will be freed by
                                                  installing, upgrading, or
                                                  removing a package.

    Customizing the package hierarchy

The package hierarchy is generated by a grouping policy: rules describing how
the hierarchy should be built. The grouping policy describes a “pipeline” of
rules; each rule can discard packages, create sub-hierarchies in which packages
reside, or otherwise manipulate the tree. The configuration items
Aptitude::UI::Default-Grouping and Aptitude::UI::Default-Preview-Grouping set
the grouping policies for newly created package lists and preview screens,
respectively. You can set the grouping policy for the current package list by
pressing G.

The grouping policy is described by a comma-separated list of rules:
rule1,rule2,.... Each rule consists of the name of the rule, possibly followed
by arguments: for instance, versions or section(subdir). Whether arguments are
required and how many arguments are required (or allowed) depends on the type of
rule.

Rules can be non-terminal or terminal. A non-terminal rule will process a
package by generating some part of the hierarchy, then passing the package on to
a later rule. A terminal rule, on the other hand, will also generate part of the
tree (typically items corresponding to the package), but does not pass its
package to a later rule. If no terminal rule is specified, aptitude will use the
default rule, which is to create the standard “package items”.

action

        Groups packages according to the action scheduled on them; packages that
        are not upgradable and will be unchanged are ignored. This is the
        grouping that is used in preview trees.

architecture

        Groups packages according to their architecture.

deps

        This is a terminal rule.

        Creates standard package items which can be expanded to reveal the
        dependencies of the package.

filter(pattern)

        Include only packages for which at least one version matches pattern.

        If pattern is “missing”, no packages are discarded. This is a backwards
        compatibility feature and may be removed in the future.

firstchar[(mode)]

        Groups packages based on the first character of their name.

        To be precise, it is not always the first letter -- for packages
        starting with lib* the name of the group is liba, libb, ... like in
        Debian FTPs.

        mode can be one of the following:

             binary

                     Group based on the binary package name. This is the default
                     if no mode is specified.

                     Example 2.7. Grouping policy firstchar or firstchar(binary)

                     With the source package dpkg as an example, the binary
                     packages dselect, dpkg and dpkg-dev would be grouped under
                     d, while libdpkg-dev and libdpkg-perl would be added to the
                     libd group.

             source

                     Group based on the source package name.

                     This is useful for example when browsing packages coming
                     from the same source package (source grouping policy)
                     within large collections (examples: all installed packages,
                     all upgradable packages, all packages from "main" section),
                     to add an intermediate grouping step. In this way, one can
                     for example emulate the hierarchy of FTPs (try grouping:
                     "section(topdir),firstchar(source),source").

                     Example 2.8. Grouping policy firstchar(source)

                     Again, with the source package dpkg as an example, all the
                     binary packages dselect, dpkg, dpkg-dev, libdpkg-dev and
                     libdpkg-perl would be grouped under d.

pattern(pattern [=> title] [{ policy }] [, ...])

        A customizable grouping policy. Each version of every package is matched
        against the given patterns. The first match found is used to assign a
        title to the package; packages are then grouped by their title. Strings
        of the form \N that occur in title will be replaced by the Nth result of
        the match. If title is not present, it is assumed to be \1. Note that
        packages which do not match any patterns will not appear in the tree at
        all.

        Example 2.9. Use of pattern to group packages by their maintainer

        pattern(?maintainer() => \1)

        The example above will group packages according to their Maintainer
        field. The policy pattern(?maintainer()) will do the same thing, as the
        absent title defaults to \1.

        Instead of => title, an entry may end with ||. This indicates that
        packages matching the corresponding pattern will be inserted into the
        tree at the same level as the pattern grouping, rather than being placed
        in subtrees.

        Example 2.10.  Use of pattern with some packages placed at the top level

        pattern(?action(remove) => Packages Being Removed, ?true ||)

        The example above will place packages that are being removed into a
        subtree, and place all the other packages at the current level, grouped
        according to the policies that follow pattern.

        By default, all the packages that match each pattern are grouped
        according to the rules that follow the pattern policy. To specify a
        different policy for some packages, write the policy in braces ({})
        after the title of the group, after the ||, or after the pattern if
        neither is present. For instance:

        Example 2.11.  Use of the pattern grouping policy with sub-policies

        pattern(?action(remove) => Packages Being Removed {}, ?action(install)
        => Packages Being Installed, ?true || {status})

        The policy in the above example has the following effects:

           • Packages that are being removed are placed into a subtree labeled
             “Packages Being Removed”; the grouping policy for this subtree is
             empty, so the packages are placed into a flat list.

           • Packages that are being installed are placed into a subtree labeled
             Packages Being Installed and grouped according to the policies that
             follow pattern.

           • All remaining packages are placed at the top level of the tree,
             grouped according to their status.

        See the section called “Search patterns” for more information on the
        format of pattern.

priority

        Groups packages according to their priority.

section[(mode[,passthrough])]

        Groups packages according to their Section field.

        mode can be one of the following:

             none

                     Group based on the whole Section field, so categories like
                     “non-free/games” will be created. This is the default if no
                     mode is specified.

             topdir

                     Group based on the part of the Section field before the
                     first / character; if this part of the Section is not
                     recognized, or if there is no /, the first entry in the
                     list Aptitude::Sections::Top-Sections will be used instead.

             subdir

                     Group based on the part of the Section field after the
                     first / character, if it is contained in the list
                     Aptitude::Sections::Top-Sections. If not, or if there is no
                     /, group based on the entire Section field instead.

             subdirs

                     Group based on the part of the Section field after the
                     first / character, if the portion of the field preceding it
                     is contained in the list Aptitude::Sections::Top-Sections;
                     if not, or if there is no /, the entire field will be used.
                     If there are multiple / characters in the portion of the
                     field that is used, a hierarchy of groups will be formed.
                     For instance, if “games” is not a member of
                     Aptitude::Sections::Top-Sections, then a package with a
                     section of “games/arcade” will be placed under the
                     top-level heading “games”, in a sub-tree named “arcade”.

        If passthrough is present, packages which for some reason lack a true
        Section (for instance, virtual packages) will be passed directly to the
        next level of grouping without first being placed in sub-categories.

status

        Groups packages into the following categories:

           • Security Updates

           • Upgradable

           • New

           • Installed

           • Not Installed

           • Obsolete and Locally Created

           • Virtual

source

        Groups packages according to their source package name.

tag[(facet)]

        Groups packages according to the Tag information stored in the Debian
        package files. If facet is provided, then only tags corresponding to
        that facet will be displayed, and packages lacking this facet will be
        hidden; otherwise, all packages will be displayed at least once (with
        tagless packages listed separately from packages that have tags).

        For more information on debtags, see http://debtags.alioth.debian.org.

task

        Creates a tree called “Tasks” which contains the available tasks
        (information on tasks is read from debian-tasks.desc in the package
        tasksel). The rule following task will create its categories as siblings
        of Tasks.

versions

        This is a terminal rule.

        Creates standard package items which can be expanded to reveal the
        versions of the package.

    Customizing how packages are sorted

By default, packages in the package list or in the output of aptitude search are
sorted by name. However, it is often useful to sort them according to different
criteria (for instance, package size), and aptitude allows you to do just that
by modifying the sorting policy.

Like the grouping policy described in the previous section, the sorting policy
is a comma-separated list. Each item in the list is the name of a sorting rule;
if packages are “equal” according to the first rule, the second rule is used to
sort them, and so on. Placing a tilde character (~) in front of a rule reverses
the usual meaning of that rule. For instance, priority,~name will sort packages
by priority, but packages with the same priority will be placed in reverse order
according to name.

To change the sorting policy for an active package list, press S. To change the
default sorting for all package lists, set the configuration option
Aptitude::UI::Default-Sorting. To change the sorting policy for aptitude search,
use the --sort command-line option.

The available rules are:

installsize

        Sorts packages by the estimated amount of size they require when
        installed.

installsizechange

        Sorts packages by the change in the installed size (estimated amount of
        size required when installed), comparing the current version (if
        installed) and the candidate version to be installed, upgraded or
        removed.

debsize

        Sorts packages by the size of the package.

name

        Sorts packages by name.

priority

        Sorts packages by priority.

version

        Sorts packages according to their version number.

  Customizing keybindings

The keys used to activate commands in aptitude can be customized in the
configuration file. Every command has an associated configuration variable under
Aptitude::UI::Keybindings; to change the keystroke bound to a command, just set
the corresponding variable to the keystroke. For instance, to make the key s
perform a search, set Aptitude::UI::Keybindings::Search to “s”. You can require
the Control key to be pressed by placing “C-” in front of the key: for instance,
using “C-s” instead of “s” would bind Search to Control+s instead of s. Finally,
you can bind a command to several keys at once using a comma-separated list: for
instance, using “s,C-s” would cause both s and Control+s to perform a search.

The following commands can be bound to keys by setting the variable
Aptitude::UI::Keybindings::command, where command is the name of the command to
be bound:

┌────────────────────────┬─────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┐
│        Command         │       Default       │          Description          │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ If packages are broken and    │
│                        │                     │ aptitude has suggested a      │
│ ApplySolution          │ !                   │ solution to the problem,      │
│                        │                     │ immediately apply the         │
│                        │                     │ solution.                     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Move to the beginning of the  │
│ Begin                  │ home,C-a            │ current display: to the top   │
│                        │                     │ of a list, or to the left of  │
│                        │                     │ a text entry field.           │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Cancels the current           │
│ Cancel                 │ C-g,escape,C-[      │ interaction: for instance,    │
│                        │                     │ discards a dialog box or      │
│                        │                     │ deactivates the menu.         │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Displays the changelog.Debian │
│ Changelog              │ C                   │ of the currently selected     │
│                        │                     │ package or package version.   │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Changes the grouping policy   │
│ ChangePkgTreeGrouping  │ G                   │ of the currently active       │
│                        │                     │ package list.                 │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Changes the limit of the      │
│ ChangePkgTreeLimit     │ l                   │ currently active package      │
│                        │                     │ list.                         │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Changes the sorting policy of │
│ ChangePkgTreeSorting   │ S                   │ the currently active package  │
│                        │                     │ list.                         │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Marks the currently selected  │
│ ClearAuto              │ m                   │ package as having been        │
│                        │                     │ manually installed.           │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Collapses the selected tree   │
│ CollapseAll            │ ]                   │ and all its children in a     │
│                        │                     │ hierarchical list.            │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ CollapseTree           │ left                │ Collapses the selected tree   │
│                        │                     │ in a hierarchical list.       │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ In dialog boxes, this is      │
│                        │                     │ equivalent to pressing “Ok”;  │
│ Confirm                │ enter               │ when interacting with a       │
│                        │                     │ status-line multiple choice   │
│                        │                     │ question, it chooses the      │
│                        │                     │ default option.               │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ Cycle                  │ tab                 │ Switches the keyboard focus   │
│                        │                     │ to the next “widget”.         │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ CycleNext              │ f6                  │ Switches to the next active   │
│                        │                     │ view.                         │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ CycleOrder             │ o                   │ Cycles through predefined     │
│                        │                     │ arrangements of the display.  │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ CyclePrev              │ f7                  │ Switches to the previous      │
│                        │                     │ active view.                  │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Deletes all text between the  │
│ DelBOL                 │ C-u                 │ cursor and the beginning of   │
│                        │                     │ the line.                     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ DelBack                │ backspace,C-h       │ Deletes the previous          │
│                        │                     │ character when entering text. │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Deletes all text from the     │
│ DelEOL                 │ C-k                 │ cursor to the end of the      │
│                        │                     │ line.                         │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Deletes the character under   │
│ DelForward             │ delete,C-d          │ the cursor when entering      │
│                        │                     │ text.                         │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Displays the dependencies of  │
│ Dependencies           │ d                   │ the currently selected        │
│                        │                     │ package.                      │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ When browsing the package     │
│ DescriptionCycle       │ i                   │ list, cycles through the      │
│                        │                     │ available views in the        │
│                        │                     │ information area.             │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ When browsing the package     │
│ DescriptionDown        │ z                   │ list, scrolls the information │
│                        │                     │ area down one line.           │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ When browsing the package     │
│ DescriptionUp          │ a                   │ list, scrolls the information │
│                        │                     │ area up one line.             │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ If not in a preview screen,   │
│ DoInstallRun           │ g                   │ display the preview screen    │
│                        │                     │ ^[a]; if in a preview screen, │
│                        │                     │ perform an install run.       │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Moves down: for instance,     │
│ Down                   │ down,j              │ scrolls a text display down   │
│                        │                     │ or selects the next item in a │
│                        │                     │ list.                         │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ If packages are broken,       │
│                        │                     │ writes the current state of   │
│ DumpResolver           │ *                   │ the problem-resolver to a     │
│                        │                     │ file (for debugging           │
│                        │                     │ purposes).                    │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Move to the end of the        │
│ End                    │ end,C-e             │ current display: to the       │
│                        │                     │ bottom of a list, or to the   │
│                        │                     │ right of a text entry field.  │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ If some packages are broken   │
│                        │                     │ and aptitude has suggested a  │
│ ExamineSolution        │ e                   │ solution, display a dialog    │
│                        │                     │ box with a detailed           │
│                        │                     │ description of the proposed   │
│                        │                     │ solution.                     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Expands the selected tree and │
│ ExpandAll              │ [                   │ all its children in a         │
│                        │                     │ hierarchical list.            │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ ExpandTree             │ right               │ Expands the selected tree in  │
│                        │                     │ a hierarchical list.          │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Select the first solution     │
│ FirstSolution          │ <                   │ produced by the problem       │
│                        │                     │ resolver.                     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Forbids a package from being  │
│ ForbidUpgrade          │ F                   │ upgraded to the currently     │
│                        │                     │ available version (or a       │
│                        │                     │ particular version).          │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Discards all information      │
│                        │                     │ about which packages are      │
│ ForgetNewPackages      │ f                   │ “new” (causes the list of     │
│                        │                     │ “new” packages to become      │
│                        │                     │ empty).                       │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ Help                   │ ?                   │ Displays the on-line help     │
│                        │                     │ screen.                       │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ In a line editor with         │
│ HistoryNext            │ down,C-n            │ history, moves forwards in    │
│                        │                     │ the history.                  │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ In a line editor with         │
│ HistoryPrev            │ up,C-p              │ history, moves backwards in   │
│                        │                     │ the history.                  │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ Hold                   │ =                   │ Places a package on hold.     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ Install                │ +                   │ Flags a package for           │
│                        │                     │ installation.                 │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Marks a single package for    │
│ InstallSingle          │ I                   │ installation; all other       │
│                        │                     │ packages are kept at their    │
│                        │                     │ current version.              │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Cancels all installation or   │
│ Keep                   │ :                   │ removal requests and all      │
│                        │                     │ holds for a package.          │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Select the last solution      │
│ LastSolution           │ <                   │ produced by the problem       │
│                        │                     │ resolver.                     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Moves left: for instance,     │
│                        │                     │ moves one menu to the left in │
│ Left                   │ left,h              │ the menu bar, or moves the    │
│                        │                     │ cursor to the left when       │
│                        │                     │ editing text.                 │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ In a hierarchical list,       │
│                        │                     │ selects the next sibling of   │
│ LevelDown              │ J                   │ the currently selected item   │
│                        │                     │ (the next item at the same    │
│                        │                     │ level with the same parent).  │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ In a hierarchical list,       │
│                        │                     │ selects the previous sibling  │
│ LevelUp                │ K                   │ of the currently selected     │
│                        │                     │ item (the previous item at    │
│                        │                     │ the same level with the same  │
│                        │                     │ parent).                      │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Attempts to upgrade all       │
│                        │                     │ packages which are not held   │
│ MarkUpgradable         │ U                   │ back or forbidden from        │
│                        │                     │ upgrading. It also installs   │
│                        │                     │ new Essential or Required     │
│                        │                     │ packages.                     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ MineFlagSquare         │ f                   │ In Minesweeper, places or     │
│                        │                     │ removes a flag on a square.   │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ MineLoadGame           │ L                   │ Loads a Minesweeper game.     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ MineSaveGame           │ S                   │ Saves a Minesweeper game.     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ MineSweepSquare        │ No binding          │ Sweeps around the current     │
│                        │                     │ square in Minesweeper.        │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ MineUncoverSquare      │ No binding          │ Uncovers the current square   │
│                        │                     │ in Minesweeper                │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Uncovers the current square   │
│ MineUncoverSweepSquare │ enter               │ in Minesweeper if it is       │
│                        │                     │ covered; otherwise, sweeps    │
│                        │                     │ around it.                    │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ NextPage               │ pagedown,C-f        │ Moves the current display one │
│                        │                     │ page forward.                 │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Advance the dependency        │
│ NextSolution           │ .                   │ resolver to the next          │
│                        │                     │ solution.                     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ This key will select the “no” │
│ No                     │ n^[b]               │ button in yes/no dialog       │
│                        │                     │ boxes.                        │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Selects the parent of the     │
│                        │                     │ selected item in a            │
│ Parent                 │ ^, left (in package │ hierarchical list. left is    │
│                        │ items)              │ used only in package items    │
│                        │                     │ (rows) when showing trees of  │
│                        │                     │ packages.                     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ PrevPage               │ pageup,C-b          │ Moves the current display one │
│                        │                     │ page backward.                │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Return the dependency         │
│ PrevSolution           │ ,                   │ resolver to the previous      │
│                        │                     │ solution.                     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ Purge                  │ _                   │ Flags the currently selected  │
│                        │                     │ package to be purged.         │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Activates the currently       │
│ PushButton             │ space,enter         │ selected button, or toggles a │
│                        │                     │ checkbox.                     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ Quit                   │ q                   │ Close the current view.       │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ QuitProgram            │ Q                   │ Quit the entire program.      │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Reject all resolver actions   │
│ RejectBreakHolds       │                     │ that would break a hold;      │
│                        │                     │ equivalent to Resolver →      │
│                        │                     │ Reject Breaking Holds.        │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ Refresh                │ C-l                 │ Redraws the screen from       │
│                        │                     │ scratch.                      │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ Remove                 │ -                   │ Flags a package for removal.  │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ ReInstall              │ L                   │ Flags the currently selected  │
│                        │                     │ package to be reinstalled.    │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Repeats the last search, but  │
│ RepeatSearchBack       │ N                   │ searches in the opposite      │
│                        │                     │ direction.                    │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ ReSearch               │ n                   │ Repeats the last search.      │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Displays packages which       │
│ ReverseDependencies    │ r                   │ depend upon the currently     │
│                        │                     │ selected package.             │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Moves right: for instance,    │
│                        │                     │ moves one menu to the right   │
│ Right                  │ right,l             │ in the menu bar, or moves the │
│                        │                     │ cursor to the right when      │
│                        │                     │ editing text.                 │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Activate the “search”         │
│ Search                 │ /                   │ function of the currently     │
│                        │                     │ active interface element.     │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Activate the “search          │
│ SearchBack             │ \                   │ backwards” function of the    │
│                        │                     │ currently active interface    │
│                        │                     │ element.                      │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ SearchBroken           │ b                   │ In a package tree, search for │
│                        │                     │ the next broken package.      │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Marks the current package as  │
│ SetAuto                │ M                   │ having been automatically     │
│                        │                     │ installed.                    │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ In a package list, toggles    │
│ ShowHideDescription    │ D                   │ whether the information area  │
│                        │                     │ is visible.                   │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ When viewing a solution,      │
│                        │                     │ marks the currently selected  │
│ SolutionActionApprove  │ a                   │ action as "approved" (it will │
│                        │                     │ be included in future         │
│                        │                     │ solutions whenever possible). │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ When viewing a solution,      │
│                        │                     │ marks the currently selected  │
│ SolutionActionReject   │ r                   │ action as "rejected" (future  │
│                        │                     │ solutions will not contain    │
│                        │                     │ it).                          │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Expands or collapses the      │
│ ToggleExpanded         │ enter               │ currently selected tree in a  │
│                        │                     │ hierarchical list.            │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│ ToggleMenuActive       │ C-m,f10,C-space     │ Activates or deactivates the  │
│                        │                     │ main menu.                    │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Cancels the last action, up   │
│                        │                     │ to when aptitude was started  │
│ Undo                   │ C-_,C-u             │ OR the last time you update   │
│                        │                     │ the package lists or          │
│                        │                     │ installed packages.           │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Moves up: for instance,       │
│ Up                     │ up,k                │ scrolls a text display up or  │
│                        │                     │ selects the previous item in  │
│                        │                     │ a list.                       │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Updates the list of packages  │
│ UpdatePackageList      │ u                   │ by fetching new lists from    │
│                        │                     │ the Internet if necessary.    │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ Displays the available        │
│ Versions               │ v                   │ versions of the currently     │
│                        │                     │ selected package.             │
├────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
│                        │                     │ This key will select the      │
│ Yes                    │ y ^[b]              │ “Yes” button in yes/no dialog │
│                        │                     │ boxes.                        │
├────────────────────────┴─────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┤
│ ^[a] unless Aptitude::Display-Planned-Action is false.                       │
│                                                                              │
│ ^[b] This default may be different in different locales.                     │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

In addition to letter keys, number keys, and punctuation, the following
“special” keys can be bound:

┌──────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│     Key name     │                        Description                        │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ a1               │ The A1 key.                                               │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ a3               │ The A3 key.                                               │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ b2               │ The B2 key.                                               │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ backspace        │ The Backspace key.                                        │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ backtab          │ The back-tab key                                          │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ begin            │ The Begin key (not Home)                                  │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ break            │ The “break” key.                                          │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ c1               │ The C1 key.                                               │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ c3               │ The C3 key.                                               │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ cancel           │ The Cancel key.                                           │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ create           │ The Create key.                                           │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ comma            │ Comma (,) -- note that because commas are used to list    │
│                  │ keys, this is the only way to bind to a comma.            │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ command          │ The Command key.                                          │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ copy             │ The Copy key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ delete           │ The Delete key.                                           │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ delete_line      │ The “delete line” key.                                    │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ down             │ The “down” arrow key.                                     │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ end              │ The End key.                                              │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ entry            │ The Enter key.                                            │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ exit             │ The Exit key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ f1, f2, ..., f10 │ The F1 through F10 keys.                                  │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ find             │ The Find key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ home             │ The Home key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ insert           │ The Insert key.                                           │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ insert_exit      │ The “insert exit” key.                                    │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ clear            │ The “clear” key.                                          │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ clear_eol        │ The “clear to end of line” key.                           │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ clear_eos        │ The “clear to end of screen” key.                         │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ insert_line      │ The “insert line” key.                                    │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ left             │ The “left” arrow key.                                     │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ mark             │ The Mark key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ message          │ The Message key.                                          │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ move             │ The Move key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ next             │ The Next key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ open             │ The Open key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ previous         │ The Previous key.                                         │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ print            │ The Print key.                                            │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ redo             │ The Redo key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ reference        │ The Reference key.                                        │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ refresh          │ The Refresh key.                                          │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ replace          │ The Replace key.                                          │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ restart          │ The Restart key.                                          │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ resume           │ The Resume key.                                           │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ return           │ The Return key.                                           │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ right            │ The “right” arrow key.                                    │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ save             │ The Save key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ scrollf          │ The “scroll forward” key.                                 │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ scrollr          │ The “scroll backwards” key.                               │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ select           │ The Select key.                                           │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ suspend          │ The Suspend key.                                          │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ pagedown         │ The “Page Down” key.                                      │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ pageup           │ The “Page Up” key.                                        │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ space            │ The Space key                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ tab              │ The Tab key                                               │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ undo             │ The Undo key.                                             │
├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ up               │ The “up” arrow key.                                       │
└──────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

In addition to binding keys globally, it is possible to change key bindings for
one particular part (or domain) of aptitude: for instance, to make Tab the
equivalent of the right arrow key in menu bars, set
Aptitude::UI::Keybindings::Menubar::Right to “tab,right”. The following domains
are available:

┌───────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│    Domain     │                         Description                          │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ EditLine      │ Used by line-editing widgets, such as the entry field in a   │
│               │ “search” dialog.                                             │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Menu          │ Used by drop-down menus.                                     │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Menubar       │ Used by the menu bar at the top of the screen.               │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Minesweeper   │ Used by the Minesweeper mode.                                │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ MinibufChoice │ Used by the multiple-choice prompts that appear if you have  │
│               │ chosen to have some prompts appear in the status line.       │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Pager         │ Used when displaying a file on disk (for instance, the help  │
│               │ text).                                                       │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ PkgNode       │ Used by packages, trees of packages, package versions, and   │
│               │ package dependencies when they appear in package lists.      │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ PkgTree       │ Used by package lists.                                       │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Table         │ Used by tables of widgets (for instance, dialog boxes).      │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ TextLayout    │ Used by formatted text displays, such as package             │
│               │ descriptions.                                                │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Tree          │ Used by all tree displays (including package lists, for      │
│               │ which it can be overridden by PkgTree).                      │
└───────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

  Customizing text colors and styles

The colors and visual styles used by aptitude to display text can be extensively
customized. Each visual element has an associated “style”, which describes the
particular colors and visual attributes that will be used to display that
element. Styles take the form of a list of color and attribute settings. This
list is not necessarily exhaustive; if some colors or attributes are not
explicitly specified, their values will be taken from the surrounding visual
context. In fact, most visual elements have an “empty” style by default.

You can change the contents of a style by creating a configuration group of the
same name in the apt or aptitude configuration file. For instance, the
“MenuBorder” style is used to draw the visual border around drop-down menus. By
default, this border is drawn bold and white-on-blue. Placing the following text
in the configuration file would change it to white-on-cyan:

Aptitude::UI::Styles {
  MenuBorder {fg white; bg cyan; set bold;};
};

As you can see, a style's configuration group consists of a sequence of
instructions. The general classes of instructions are:

fg color

        Sets the text foreground to the given color. See below for a list of the
        colors known to aptitude.

bg color

        Sets the text background to the given color. See below for a list of the
        colors known to aptitude.

set attribute

        Enables the given text attribute. See below for a list of the text
        attributes known to aptitude.

clear attribute

        Disables the given text attribute. See below for a list of the text
        attributes known to aptitude.

flip attribute

        Toggles the given text attribute: if it is enabled in the surrounding
        element, it will be disabled, and vice versa. See below for a list of
        the text attributes known to aptitude.

The colors that aptitude recognizes are black, blue, cyan, green, magenta, red,
white, and yellow ^[20]. In addition, you may specify default in place of a
background color to use the default terminal background (this could be the
default color, an image file, or even “transparent”). The styles that aptitude
recognizes are:

blink

        Enables blinking text.

bold

        Makes the foreground color of the text (or the background if reverse
        video is enabled) brighter.

dim

        May cause text to be extra-dim on some terminals. No effect has been
        observed on common Linux terminals.

reverse

        Swaps the foreground and background colors. Many visual elements flip
        this attribute to perform common highlighting tasks.

standout

        This enables “the best highlighting mode of the terminal”. In xterms it
        is similar, but not idential to, reverse video; behavior on other
        terminals may vary.

underline

        Enables underlined text.

You can select several attributes at once by separating them with commas; for
instance, set bold,standout;.

[Note] Note
       As hinted at above, the interpretation of both styles and text attributes
       is highly terminal-dependent. You may need to experiment a bit to find
       out exactly what some settings do on your terminal.

The following styles can be customized in aptitude:

Figure 2.14. Customizable styles in aptitude

┌────────────────────────────┬────────────────┬────────────────────────────────┐
│           Style            │    Default     │          Description           │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ Bullet                     │ fg yellow; set │ The style of the bullets in    │
│                            │ bold;          │ bulleted lists.                │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of newer versions of │
│                            │                │ the package in the changelog   │
│                            │                │ view. Note that aptitude will  │
│ ChangelogNewerVersion      │ set bold;      │ only highlight newer versions  │
│                            │                │ of the package if you have the │
│                            │                │ package                        │
│                            │                │ libparse-debianchangelog-perl  │
│                            │                │ installed.                     │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ Default                    │ fg white; bg   │ The basic style of the screen. │
│                            │ black;         │                                │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ DepBroken                  │ fg black; bg   │ The style of unfulfilled       │
│                            │ red;           │ dependencies.                  │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg black; bg   │ The style of menu entries that │
│ DisabledMenuEntry          │ blue; set dim; │ are disabled and cannot be     │
│                            │                │ used.                          │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style used to indicate     │
│ DownloadHit                │ fg black; bg   │ that a file was “hit”: i.e.,   │
│                            │ green;         │ it has not changed since the   │
│                            │                │ last time it was downloaded.   │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ DownloadProgress           │ fg blue; bg    │ The style of the progress      │
│                            │ yellow;        │ indicator for a download.      │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg white; bg   │ The style of line editors (for │
│ EditLine                   │ black; clear   │ instance, the entry in the     │
│                            │ reverse;       │ “Search” dialog).              │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ Error                      │ fg white; bg   │ The style of error messages.   │
│                            │ red; set bold; │                                │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg white; bg   │                                │
│ Header                     │ blue; set      │ The style of screen headers.   │
│                            │ bold;          │                                │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg white; bg   │ The style of the currently     │
│ HighlightedMenuBar         │ blue; set      │ selected menu name in the menu │
│                            │ bold,reverse;  │ bar.                           │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg white; bg   │ The style of the currently     │
│ HighlightedMenuEntry       │ blue; set      │ selected choice in a menu.     │
│                            │ bold,reverse;  │                                │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg yellow; bg  │ The style of the dialog used   │
│ MediaChange                │ red; set bold; │ to ask the user to insert a    │
│                            │                │ new CD.                        │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg white; bg   │                                │
│ MenuBar                    │ blue; set      │ The style of the menu bar.     │
│                            │ bold;          │                                │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg white; bg   │ The style of the borders that  │
│ MenuBorder                 │ blue; set      │ surround a drop-down menu.     │
│                            │ bold;          │                                │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ MenuEntry                  │ fg white; bg   │ The style of each entry in a   │
│                            │ blue;          │ drop-down menu.                │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ MineBomb                   │ fg red; set    │ The style of bombs in          │
│                            │ bold;          │ Minesweeper.                   │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ MineBorder                 │ set bold;      │ The style of the border drawn  │
│                            │                │ around a Minesweeper board.    │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ MineFlag                   │ fg red; set    │ The style of flags in          │
│                            │ bold;          │ Minesweeper.                   │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of the number N in   │
│ MineNumberN                │ Various        │ Minesweeper; N may range from  │
│                            │                │ 0 to 8.                        │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg white; bg   │ The color used to display      │
│ MultiplexTab               │ blue;          │ “tabs” other than the          │
│                            │                │ currently selected one.        │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ MultiplexTabHighlighted    │ fg blue; bg    │ The color used to display the  │
│                            │ white;         │ currently selected “tab”.      │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg red; flip   │ The style of packages in the   │
│ PkgBroken                  │ reverse;       │ package list which have        │
│                            │                │ unfulfilled dependencies.      │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of highlighted       │
│ PkgBrokenHighlighted       │ fg red;        │ packages in the package list   │
│                            │                │ which have unfulfilled         │
│                            │                │ dependencies.                  │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of packages which    │
│ PkgNotInstalled            │                │ are not currently installed    │
│                            │                │ and will not be installed.     │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of highlighted       │
│ PkgNotInstalledHighlighted │                │ packages which are not         │
│                            │                │ currently installed and will   │
│                            │                │ not be installed.              │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of packages which    │
│ PkgIsInstalled             │ set bold;      │ are currently installed and    │
│                            │                │ for which no actions are       │
│                            │                │ scheduled.                     │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of highlighted       │
│ PkgIsInstalledHighlighted  │ set bold; flip │ packages which are currently   │
│                            │ reverse;       │ installed and for which no     │
│                            │                │ actions are scheduled.         │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of packages in the   │
│ PkgToDowngrade             │ set bold;      │ package list which will be     │
│                            │                │ downgraded.                    │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ set bold; flip │ The style of highlighted       │
│ PkgToDowngradeHighlighted  │ reverse        │ packages in the package list   │
│                            │                │ which will be downgraded.      │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg white; flip │ The style of packages in the   │
│ PkgToHold                  │ reverse;       │ package list which are on      │
│                            │                │ hold.                          │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of highlighted       │
│ PkgToHoldHighlighted       │ fg white;      │ packages in the package list   │
│                            │                │ which are on hold.             │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of packages in the   │
│ PkgToInstall               │ fg green; flip │ package list which are being   │
│                            │ reverse;       │ installed (not upgraded) or    │
│                            │                │ reinstalled.                   │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of highlighted       │
│ PkgToInstallHighlighted    │ fg green;      │ packages in the package list   │
│                            │                │ which are being installed (not │
│                            │                │ upgraded) or reinstalled.      │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg magenta;    │ The style of packages in the   │
│ PkgToRemove                │ flip reverse;  │ package list which will be     │
│                            │                │ removed or purged.             │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of highlighted       │
│ PkgToRemoveHighlighted     │ fg magenta;    │ packages in the package list   │
│                            │                │ which will be removed or       │
│                            │                │ purged.                        │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg cyan; flip  │ The style of packages in the   │
│ PkgToUpgrade               │ reverse;       │ package list which will be     │
│                            │                │ upgraded.                      │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of highlighted       │
│ PkgToUpgradeHighlighted    │ fg cyan;       │ packages in the package list   │
│                            │                │ which will be upgraded.        │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │                │ The style of progress          │
│ Progress                   │ fg blue; bg    │ indicators such as the one     │
│                            │ yellow;        │ that appears while the package │
│                            │                │ cache is being loaded.         │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ SolutionActionApproved     │ bg green;      │ The style of approved actions  │
│                            │                │ in a solution.                 │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ SolutionActionRejected     │ bg red;        │ The style of rejected actions  │
│                            │                │ in a solution.                 │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg white; bg   │ The style of status lines at   │
│ Status                     │ blue; set      │ the bottom of the screen.      │
│                            │ bold;          │                                │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ TreeBackground             │                │ The basic color of all visual  │
│                            │                │ lists and trees.               │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│                            │ fg red; bg     │ The color used to display      │
│ TrustWarning               │ black; set     │ warnings about package trust.  │
│                            │ bold;          │                                │
└────────────────────────────┴────────────────┴────────────────────────────────┘

  Customizing the display layout

It is possible to rearrange the aptitude package list by making suitable
modifications to the configuration file.

    Display elements

The layout is stored in the configuration group
Aptitude::UI::Default-Package-View, and consists of a list of display elements:

Name Type {
  Row row;
  Column column;
  Width width;
  Height height;

  additional options...
};

This creates a display element named Name; the type of element created is
determined by Type. The Row, Column, Width, and Height options must be present;
they determine where the display element is placed. (see below for a detailed
explanation of how display elements are arranged)

For examples of how to change the display layout, see the theme definitions in
the file /usr/share/aptitude/aptitude-defaults.

The following types of display elements are available:

Description

        This display element will contain the “information area” (typically a
        description of the currently selected package).

        The option PopUpDownKey gives the name of a keyboard command which will
        cause the display element to be shown or hidden. For instance, setting
        this to ShowHideDescription will give the current display element the
        same behavior as the default information area. The option
        PopUpDownLinked gives the name of another display element; the current
        element will be shown or hidden whenever the other element is.

MainWidget

        This is a placeholder for the “main” display element: typically this is
        the list of packages. A display layout must contain exactly one
        MainWidget element: no more, no less.

Static

        A region of the screen which displays some text, possibly containing
        formatting codes as described in the section called “Customizing how
        packages are displayed”. The text to display can be given in the Columns
        option, or it can be stored in another configuration variable specified
        by the ColumnsCfg option. The color of the text is determined by the
        color named by the Color option.

        Static items can be displayed and hidden in the same way as Description
        items, using the PopUpDownKey and PopUpDownLinked options.

    Placement of display elements

The display elements are arranged in a “table”. The upper-left corner of an
element is in the cell given by its Row and Column options (typically starting
from row 0 and column 0, but this is not required). The width of an element in
cells is given by its Width option, and its height is given by its Height
option.

Once the display elements are arranged and have been given an initial amount of
space on the screen, there is likely to be space left over. If there is extra
vertical space, each row containing a display element whose RowExpand option is
true will be allocated a share of the extra space; similarly, if there is extra
horizontal space, each column containing a display element whose ColExpand
option is true will be allocated a share of the extra space.

In the event that there is not enough space, every row and column whose widgets
all have their RowShrink or ColShrink options set to true will be shrunk. If
this is not enough, all rows and columns are shrunk to fit into the available
space.

If a display element is not expanded, but its row or column is, its alignment is
determined by the RowAlign and ColAlign options. Setting them to Left, Right,
Top, Bottom, or Center will tell aptitude where to place the element within the
row or column.

For instance, the following configuration group creates a static element named
“Header”, which is three cells wide and will expand horizontally but not
vertically. It has the same color as other header lines and uses the standard
display format for header lines:

Header Static {
  Row 0;
  Column 0;
  Width 3;
  Height 1;

  ColExpand true;
  ColAlign Center;

  RowAlign Center;

  Color ScreenHeaderColor;
  ColumnsCfg HEADER;
};

    Display layout option reference

The following options are available for display elements:

ColAlign alignment;

        alignment must be either Left, Right, or Center. If the row containing
        the current display element is wider than the element itself and
        ColExpand is false, the element will be placed within the row according
        to the value of alignment.

        If this option is not present, it defaults to Left.

ColExpand true|false;

        If this option is set to true, the column containing this display
        element will be allocated a share of any extra horizontal space that is
        available.

        If this option is not present, it defaults to false.

Color colorname;

        This option applies to Static elements. colorname is the name of a color
        (for instance, ScreenStatusColor) which should be used as the “default”
        color for this display element.

        If this option is not present, it defaults to DefaultWidgetBackground.

ColShrink true|false;

        If this option is set to true on each element in a column and there is
        not enough horizontal space, the column will be shrunk as necessary to
        fit the available space. Note that a column may be shrunk even if
        ColShrink is false; it simply indicates that aptitude should try
        shrinking a particular column before shrinking other columns.

        If this option is not present, it defaults to false.

Column column;

        Specifies the leftmost column containing this display element.

Columns format;

        This option applies to Static display elements for which the ColumnsCfg
        option is not set. It sets the displayed contents of the status item; it
        is a format string as described in the section called “Customizing how
        packages are displayed”.

ColumnsCfg HEADER|STATUS|name;

        This option applies to Static display elements. It sets the display
        format of the current element to the value of another configuration
        variable: if it is HEADER or STATUS, the options
        Aptitude::UI::Package-Header-Format and
        Aptitude::UI::Package-Status-Format, repectively, are used; otherwise,
        the option name is used.

        If this option is not present, the value of the Columns option is used
        to control the contents of the static item.

Height height;

        Specifies the height of the current display element.

PopUpDownKey command;

        This option applies to Description and Static display elements.

        command is the name of a keyboard command (for instance,
        ShowHideDescription). When this key is pressed, the display element will
        be hidden if it is visible, and displayed if it is hidden.

PopUpDownLinked element;

        This option applies to Description and Static display elements.

        element is the name of a display element. When element is displayed, the
        current element will also be displayed; when element is hidden, the
        current element will also be hidden.

Row row;

        Specifies the uppermost row containing this display element.

RowAlign alignment;

        alignment must be either Top, Bottom, or Center. If the row containing
        the current display element is taller than the element itself and
        RowExpand is false, the element will be placed within the row according
        to the value of alignment.

        If this option is not present, it defaults to Top.

RowExpand true|false;

        If this option is set to true, the row containing this display element
        will be allocated a share of any extra vertical space that is available.

        If this option is not present, it defaults to false.

RowShrink true|false;

        If this option is set to true on each element in a row and there is not
        enough vertical space, the row will be shrunk as necessary to fit the
        available space. Note that a row may be shrunk even if RowShrink is
        false; it simply indicates that aptitude should try shrinking a
        particular row before shrinking other rows.

        If this option is not present, it defaults to false.

Visible true|false;

        If set to false, this display element will initially be hidden.
        Presumably only useful in conjunction with PopUpDownKey and/or
        PopUpDownLinked.

        If this option is not present, it defaults to true.

Width width;

        Specifies the width of the current display element.

  Configuration file reference

    Configuration file format

In its basic form, aptitude's configuration file is a list of options and their
values. Each line of the file should have the form “Option Value;”: for
instance, the following line in the configuration file sets the option
Aptitude::Theme to “Dselect”.

Aptitude::Theme "Dselect";

An option can “contain” other options if they are written in curly braces
between the option and the semicolon following it, like this:

Aptitude::UI {
  Package-Status-Format "";
  Package-Display-Format "";
};

An option that contains other options is sometimes called a group. In fact, the
double colons that appear in option names are actually a shorthand way of
indicating containment: the option Aptitude::UI::Default-Grouping is contained
in the group Aptitude::UI, which itself is contained in the group Aptitude.
Thus, if you wanted to, you could set this option to "" as follows:

Aptitude {
  UI {
    Default-Grouping "";
  };
};

For more information on the format of the configuration file, see the manual
page apt.conf(5).

    Locations of configuration files

aptitude's configuration is read from the following sources, in order:

 1. Configuration file options specified on the command-line.

 2. The user's configuration file, ~/.aptitude/config. This file is overwritten
    when the user modifies settings in the Options menu.

 3. The system configuration file, /etc/apt/apt.conf.

 4. The system configuration fragment files, /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/*.

 5. The file specified by the APT_CONFIG environment variable (if any).

 6. Default values stored in /usr/share/aptitude/aptitude-defaults.

 7. Default values built into aptitude.

When an option is being checked, these sources are searched in order, and the
first one that provides a value for the option is used. For instance, setting an
option in /etc/apt/apt.conf will override aptitude's defaults for that option,
but will not override user settings in ~/.aptitude/config.

    Available configuration options

The following configuration options are used by aptitude. Note that these are
not the only available configuration options; options used by the underlying apt
system are not listed here. See the manual pages apt(8) and apt.conf(5) for
information on apt options.

Option: APT::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, then aptitude will not consider packages to
be unused (and thus will not automatically remove them) as long as any installed
package recommends them, even if APT::Install-Recommends is false. For more
information, see the section called “Managing automatically installed packages”.
Option: APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, then aptitude will not consider packages to
be unused (and thus will not automatically remove them) as long as any installed
package suggests them. For more information, see the section called “Managing
automatically installed packages”.
Option: APT::Get::List-Cleanup
Default: true
Description: A synonym for APT::List-Cleanup. If either of these options is set
to false, aptitude will not delete old package list files after downloading a
new set of package lists.
Option: APT::List-Cleanup
Default: true
Description: A synonym for APT::Get::List-Cleanup. If either of these options is
set to false, aptitude will not delete old package list files after downloading
a new set of package lists.
Option: APT::Install-Recommends
Default: true
Description: If this option is true and Aptitude::Auto-Install is true, then
whenever you mark a package for installation, aptitude will also mark the
packages it recommends for installation. Furthermore, if this option is true,
aptitude will not consider packages to be unused (and thus will not
automatically remove them) as long as any installed package reommends them. For
more information, see the section called “Managing automatically installed
packages” and the section called “Immediate dependency resolution”.
Option: Aptitude::Allow-Null-Upgrade
Default: false
Description: Normally, if you try to start an install run when no actions will
be performed, aptitude will print a warning and return to the package list. If
this option is true, aptitude will continue to the preview screen whenever there
are upgradable packages, rather than displaying a reminder about the Actions →
Mark Upgradable (U) command.
Option: Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude's command-line actions will always
use a “safe” dependency resolver, as if --safe-resolver had been passed on the
command line.
Option: Aptitude::Autoclean-After-Update
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will clean up obsolete files (see
Actions → Clean obsolete files) every time you update the package list. This
option is similar to Aptitude::Clean-After-Install.
Option: Aptitude::Auto-Fix-Broken
Default: true
Description: If this option is false, aptitude will ask for permission before
attempting to fix any broken packages.
Option: Aptitude::Auto-Install
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will automatically attempt to
fulfill the dependencies of a package when you mark a package to be installed or
upgraded.
Option: Aptitude::Auto-Install-Remove-Ok
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will automatically remove
conflicting packages when you mark a package to be installed or upgraded.
Normally these conflicts are flagged and you must handle them manually.
Option: Aptitude::Auto-Upgrade
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will automatically flag all
upgradable packages for upgrade when the program starts, as if you had issued
the command Actions → Mark Upgradable (U).
Option: Aptitude::Clean-After-Install
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will clean up all files in the
package cache directory (see Actions → Clean package cache) after successful
installation of packages (or similar operations). This option is similar to
Aptitude::Autoclean-After-Update.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, if this is set, aptitude will always prompt
before starting to install or remove packages, even if the prompt would normally
be skipped. This is equivalent to the -P command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Assume-Yes
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, if this option is true, aptitude will act as
if the user had answered “yes” to every prompt, causing most prompts to be
skipped. This is equivalent to the -y command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Disable-Columns
Default: false
Description: If this option is enabled, the results of command-line searches
(performed via aptitude search) will not be formatted into fixed-width columns
or truncated to the screen width. This is equivalent to the --disable-columns
command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Download-Only
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, if this option is true, aptitude will
download package files but not install them. This is equivalent to the -d
command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Fix-Broken
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, if this option is true, aptitude will be more
aggressive when attempting to fix the dependencies of broken packages. This is
equivalent to the -f command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Versions-Group-By
Default: Set to auto, none, package, or source-package to control whether and
how the output of aptitude versions is grouped. Equivalent to the command-line
option --group-by (see its documentation for more description of what the values
mean).
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Ignore-Trust-Violations
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, causes aptitude to ignore the installation of
untrusted packages. This is a synonym for APT::Get::AllowUnauthenticated.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Format
Default: %c%a%M %p# - %d#
Description: This is a format string, as described in the section called
“Customizing how packages are displayed”, which is used to display the results
of a command-line search. This is equivalent to the -F command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Width
Default:
Description: This option gives the width in characters for which command-line
search results should be formatted. If it is empty (the default; ie, ""), search
results will be formatted for the current terminal size, or for an 80-column
display if the terminal size cannot be determined.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Progress::Percent-On-Right
Default: false
Description: This option controls whether command-line progress indicators
display the percentage on the left-hand side of the screen, in the same style as
apt-get, or on the right-hand side (the default). This option does not affect
download progress indicators.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Progress::Retain-Completed
Default: false
Description: If this value is false, then command-line progress indicators will
be deleted and overwritten once the task they represent is completed. If it is
true, then they will be left on the terminal. This option does not affect
download progress indicators.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Request-Strictness
Default: 10000
Description: When run in command-line mode, if dependency problems are
encountered, aptitude will add this value to the problem resolver score of each
action that you explicitly request.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Resolver-Debug
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, if this option is true, aptitude will print
extremely verbose information while attempting to resolve broken dependencies.
As the name suggests, this option is primarily meant to aid in debugging the
problem resolver.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Resolver-Dump
Default:
Description: In command-line mode, if it is necessary to resolve broken
dependencies and this option is set to the name of a writable file, the resolver
state will be dumped to this file before any calculations are undertaken.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Resolver-Show-Steps
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, then a dependency solution will be
displayed as a sequence of resolutions of individual dependencies; for instance,
“wesnoth depends upon wesnoth-data (= 1.2.4-1) -> installing wesnoth-data
1.2.4-1 (unstable)”. To toggle between the two display modes, press o at the
prompt “Accept this solution?”.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Deps
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, if this option is true, aptitude will display
a brief summary of the dependencies (if any) relating to a package's state. This
is equivalent to the -D command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Size-Changes
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, if this option is true, aptitude will display
the expected change in the amount of space used by each package. This is
equivalent to the -Z command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Summary
Default: no-summary
Description: This option sets the default value of the command-line argument
--show-summary. See the documentation of --show-summary for a list of the
allowed values of this option and their meanings.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Versions
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, if this option is true, aptitude will display
the version of a package that is being installed or removed. This is equivalent
to the -V command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Why
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, if this option is true, aptitude will display
the manually installed packages that require each automatically installed
package, or the manually installed packages that cause a conflict with each
automatically removed package. This is equivalent to the -W command-line option
and displays the same information you can access via aptitude why or by pressing
i in a package list.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Version-Display-Format
Default: %c%a%M %p# %t %i
Description: This is a format string, as described in the section called
“Customizing how packages are displayed”, which is used to display the output of
aptitude versions. This is equivalent to the -F command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Versions-Show-Package-Names
Default: Set to always, auto, or never to control when package names are
displayed in the output of aptitude versions. Equivalent to the command-line
option --show-package-names (see its documentation for more description of what
the values mean).
Option: Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::Show-Resolver-Actions
Default: false
Description: If this option is enabled, then when the “safe” dependency resolver
has been activated via --safe-resolver or because the command-line action is
safe-upgrade, it will display a summary of the actions taken by the resolver
before showing the installation preview. Equivalent to the command-line option
--show-resolver-actions.
Option: Aptitude::Screenshot::IncrementalLoadLimit
Default: 16384
Description: The minimum size in bytes at which aptitude will begin to display
screenshots incrementally. Below this size, screenshots will not appear until
they are fully downloaded.
Option: Aptitude::Screenshot::Cache-Max
Default: 4194304
Description: The maximum number of bytes of screenshot data that aptitude will
store in memory for screenshots that are not currently being displayed. The
default is four megabytes.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Simulate
Default: false
Description: This option is deprecated; use Aptitude::Simulate instead. In
command-line mode, causes aptitude to just display the actions that would be
performed (rather than actually performing them); in the visual interface,
causes aptitude to start in read-only mode regardless of whether you are root or
not. This is equivalent to the -s command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Verbose
Default: 0
Description: This controls how verbose the command-line mode of aptitude is.
Every occurrence of the -v command-line option adds 1 to this value.
Option: Aptitude::CmdLine::Visual-Preview
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will enter its visual interface to
display the preview of an installation run and to download packages.
Option: Aptitude::Delete-Unused
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, automatically installed packages which are
no longer required will be automatically removed. For more information, see the
section called “Managing automatically installed packages”.
Option: Aptitude::Delete-Unused-Pattern
Default:
Description: Deprecated alias for Aptitude::Keep-Unused-Pattern. If
Aptitude::Keep-Unused-Pattern is unset or set to an empty string, the value of
this configuration option will override it. Otherwise,
Aptitude::Delete-Unused-Pattern is ignored.
Option: Aptitude::Display-Planned-Action
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will display a preview screen
before actually carrying out the actions you have requested.
Option: Aptitude::Forget-New-On-Install
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will clear the list of new
packages whenever you install, upgrade, or remove packages, as if you had issued
the command Actions → Forget new packages (f).
Option: Aptitude::Forget-New-On-Update
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will clear the list of new
packages whenever the package list is updated, as if you had issued the command
Actions → Forget new packages (f).
Option: Aptitude::Get-Root-Command
Default: su:/bin/su
Description: This option sets the external command that aptitude will use to
switch to the root user (see the section called “Becoming root”). It has the
form protocol:command. protocol must be either su or sudo; it determines how
aptitude invokes the program when it wants to gain root privileges. If protocol
is su, then “command -c arguments” is used to become root; otherwise, aptitude
uses “command arguments”. The first word in command is the name of the program
that should be invoked; remaining words are treated as arguments to that
program.
Option: Aptitude::Ignore-Old-Tmp
Default: false
Description: Old versions of aptitude created a directory ~/.aptitude/.tmp which
is no longer necessary. If the directory exists and Aptitude::Ignore-Old-Tmp is
true, aptitude will ask you whether to remove this directory. This option is
automatically set to true after you reply. On the other hand, if the directory
does not exist, this option is set to false so that you will be notified if it
reappears.
Option: Aptitude::Ignore-Recommends-Important
Default: false
Description: In previous versions of aptitude, the setting
Aptitude::Recommends-Important caused recommendations to be installed
automatically, the same way that APT::Install-Recommends does today. If this
option is set to false and Aptitude::Recommends-Important is also set to false,
aptitude will set APT::Install-Recommends to false and set
Aptitude::Ignore-Recommends-Important to true on startup.
Option: Aptitude::Keep-Recommends
Default: false
Description: This is an obsolete option; use
APT::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant instead. Setting this option to true has
the same effect as setting APT::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant to true.
Option: Aptitude::Keep-Suggests
Default: false
Description: This is an obsolete option; use APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant
instead. Setting this option to true has the same effect as setting
APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant to true.
Option: Aptitude::Keep-Unused-Pattern
Default:
Description: If Aptitude::Delete-Unused is true, only unused packages which do
not match this pattern (see the section called “Search patterns”) will be
removed. If this option is set to an empty string (the default), all unused
packages will be removed.
Option: Aptitude::LockFile
Default: /var/lock/aptitude
Description: A file that will be fcntl-locked to ensure that at most one
aptitude process can modify the cache at once. In normal circumstances, you
should never need to modify this; it may be useful for debugging. Note: if
aptitude complains that it cannot acquire a lock, this is not because the lock
file needs to be deleted. fcntl locks are managed by the kernel and will be
destroyed when the program holding them terminates; failure to acquire the lock
means that another running program is using it!
Option: Aptitude::Localize-Log
Default: false
Description: If this option is enabled, aptitude will use the user's locale for
messages and dates in the log file; otherwise it is written in the "classic"
locale, to avoid having the log file written in different languages (depending
on the locales of the users running the program).
Option: Aptitude::Log
Default: /var/log/aptitude
Description: If this is set to a nonempty string, aptitude will log the package
installations, removals, and upgrades that it performs. If the value of
Aptitude::Log begins with a pipe character (ie, “|”), the remainder of its value
is used as the name of a command into which the log will be piped: for instance,
|mail -s 'Aptitude install run' root will cause the log to be emailed to root.
To log to multiple files or commands, you may set this option to a list of log
targets.
Option: Aptitude::Logging::File
Default:
Description: If this is set to a nonempty string, aptitude will write logging
messages to it; setting it to “-” causes logging messages to be printed to
standard output. This differs from the setting Aptitude::Log: that file is used
to log installations and removals, whereas this file is used to log program
events, errors, and debugging messages (if enabled). This option is equivalent
to the command-line argument --log-file. See also Aptitude::Logging::Levels.
Option: Aptitude::Logging::Levels
Default: (empty)
Description: This option is a group whose members control which log messages are
written. Each entry is either “level”, to set the global log level (the log
level of the root logger) to the given level, or “category:level”, where
category is the category of messages to modify (such as
aptitude.resolver.hints.match) and level is the lowest log level of messages in
that category that should be displayed. Valid log levels are “fatal”, “error”,
“warn”, “info”, “debug”, and “trace”. The command-line option --log-level can be
used to set or override any log level.
Option: Aptitude::Parse-Description-Bullets
Default: true
Description: If this option is enabled, aptitude will attempt to automatically
detect bulleted lists in package descriptions. This will generally improve how
descriptions are displayed, but it is not entirely backwards-compatible; some
descriptions might be formatted less attractively when this option is true than
when it is false.
Option: Aptitude::Pkg-Display-Limit
Default:
Description: The default filter applied to the package list; see the section
called “Search patterns” for details about its format.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Allow-Break-Holds
Default: false
Description: If this option is set to true, the problem resolver will consider
breaking package holds or installing forbidden versions in order to resolve a
dependency. If it is set to false, these actions will be rejected by default,
although you can always enable them manually (see the section called “Resolving
Dependencies Interactively”).
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::BreakHoldScore
Default: -300
Description: How much to reward or penalize solutions that change the state of a
held package or install a forbidden version. Note that unless
Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Allow-Break-Holds is set to true, the resolver will
never break a hold or install a forbidden version unless it has explicit
permission from the user.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Break-Hold-Level
Default: 50000
Description: The safety cost assigned to actions that break a hold set by the
user (by upgrading a held package or by installing a forbidden version of a
package). See the section called “Safety costs” for a description of safety
costs.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::BrokenScore
Default: -100
Description: How much to reward or penalize prospective solutions based on the
number of dependencies they break. For each dependency broken by a possible
solution, this many points are added to its score; typically this should be a
negative value.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::CancelRemovalScore
Default: -300
Description: How much weight the problem resolver should give to not remove or
purge a package requested to be removed or purged.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::DefaultResolutionScore
Default: 400
Description: How much to reward or penalize prospective solutions based on how
many “default” resolutions for currently unsatisfied dependencies they install.
The default resolution is the resolution that “apt-get install” or the
“immediate dependency resolver” would pick. The score is only applied for
dependencies and recommendations whose targets are not currently installed.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Discard-Null-Solution
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will never suggest cancelling all
of your proposed actions in order to resolve a dependency problem.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::EssentialRemoveScore
Default: -100000
Description: How much to reward or penalize solutions that remove an Essential
package.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Remove-Essential-Level
Default: 60000
Description: The safety cost assigned to actions that remove an Essential
package. See the section called “Safety costs” for a description of safety
costs.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::ExtraScore
Default: 0
Description: Any version of a package whose Priority is “extra” will have this
many points added to its score.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::FullReplacementScore
Default: 500
Description: Removing a package and installing another package that fully
replaces it (i.e., conflicts with it, replaces it, and provides it) is assigned
this score.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::FutureHorizon
Default: 50
Description: How many “steps” the resolver should run after finding the first
solution. Although aptitude attempts to generate better solutions before worse
solutions, sometimes it is unable to do so; this setting causes the resolver to
briefly continue searching for a better solution before displaying its results,
rather than stopping immediately after it finds the first solution.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Hints
Default: (empty)
Description: This option is a group whose members are used to configure the
problem resolver. Each item in the group is a string describing an action that
should be applied to one or more packages. The syntax for each hint, and the
effect that hints have, may be found in the section called “Configuring resolver
hints”.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::ImportantScore
Default: 4
Description: Any version of a package whose Priority is “important” will have
this many points added to its score.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Infinity
Default: 1000000
Description: A “maximum” score for potential solutions. If a set of actions has
a score worse than -Infinity, it will be discarded immediately.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::InstallScore
Default: -20
Description: How much weight the problem resolver should give to installing a
package, if the package is not already going to be installed.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Keep-All-Level
Default: 10000
Description: The safety cost assigned to the single solution that cancels all of
the actions selected by the user. See the section called “Safety costs” for a
description of safety costs.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::KeepScore
Default: 0
Description: How much weight the problem resolver should give to keeping a
package in its current state, if that package is not already going to be kept in
its current state.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::NonDefaultScore
Default: -40
Description: How much weight the problem resolver should give to installing a
non-default version of the package (one that is not the current version and not
the “candidate version”).
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Non-Default-Level
Default: 50000
Description: The safety cost assigned to actions that install non-default
versions of a package. For instance, if version 5 of a package is installed,
versions 6, 7, and 8 are available, and version 7 is the default version, then
versions 6 and 8 will be given a safety cost that is at least this high. See the
section called “Safety costs” for a description of safety costs.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::OptionalScore
Default: 1
Description: Any version of a package whose Priority is “optional” will have
this many points added to its score.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::PreserveAutoScore
Default: 0
Description: How much weight the problem resolver should give to preserving
automatic installations or removals.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::PreserveManualScore
Default: 20
Description: How much weight the problem resolver should give to preserving
explicit user selections.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::RemoveObsoleteScore
Default: 310
Description: How much weight the problem resolver should give to removing an
obsolete package (if it is not already marked for removal). It should at least
counter RemoveScore, because it will still be applied.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::RemoveScore
Default: -300
Description: How much weight the problem resolver should give to removing a
package (if it is not already marked for removal).
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Remove-Level
Default: 10000
Description: The safety cost assigned to actions that remove a package. See the
section called “Safety costs” for a description of safety costs.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::RequiredScore
Default: 8
Description: Any version of a package whose Priority is “required” will have
this many points added to its score.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::ResolutionScore
Default: 50
Description: In addition to all other scoring factors, proposed solutions that
actually resolve all unsatisfied dependencies are awarded this many extra
points.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Safe-Level
Default: 10000
Description: The safety cost assigned to actions that install the default
version of a package, upgrade a package to its default version, or cancel
installing or upgrading a package. Solutions assigned this cost could be
generated by aptitude safe-upgrade. See the section called “Safety costs” for a
description of safety costs.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::SolutionCost
Default: safety,priority
Description: Describes how to determine the cost of a solution. See the section
called “Costs in the interactive dependency resolver” for a description of what
solution costs are, what they do, and the syntax used to specify them. If the
cost cannot be parsed, an error is issued and the default cost is used instead.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::StandardScore
Default: 2
Description: Any version of a package whose Priority is “standard” will have
this many points added to its score.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::StepLimit
Default: 5000
Description: The maximum number of “steps” which should be performed by the
problem resolver on each attempt to find a solution to a dependency problem.
Decreasing this number will make aptitude “give up” sooner; increasing it will
permit the search for a solution to consume much more time and memory before it
is aborted. Setting StepLimit to 0 will disable the problem resolver entirely.
The default value is large enough to accomodate commonly encountered situations,
while preventing aptitude from “blowing up” if an overly complicated problem is
encountered. (note: this applies only to command-line searches; in the visual
interface, the resolver will continue working until it reaches a solution)
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::StepScore
Default: -10
Description: How much to reward or penalize prospective solutions based on their
length. For each action performed by a solution, these many points are added to
its score. The larger this value is, the more the resolver tends to stick with
its first choice rather than considering alternatives; this will cause it to
produce a solution more quickly, but the solution might be of slightly lower
quality than it would otherwise be.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Trace-Directory
Default:
Description: If this value is set, then each time the problem resolver produces
a solution, a stripped-down version of the package state sufficient to reproduce
that solution is written to the given file. If
Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Trace-File is also set, the same information will
also be written to the trace file. Trace directories are more transparent than
trace files, and are more suitable for, e.g., including in source trees as test
cases.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Trace-File
Default:
Description: If this value is set, then each time the problem resolver produces
a solution, a stripped-down version of the package state sufficient to reproduce
that solution is written to the given file. If
Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Trace-Directory is also set, the same information
will also be written to the trace directory. A trace file is simply a compressed
archive of a trace directory; it will take less space than the trace directory
and is suitable for transmission over a network.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::UndoFullReplacementScore
Default: -500
Description: Installing a package and removing another package that fully
replaces it (i.e., conflicts with it, replaces it, and provides it) is assigned
this score.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::UnfixedSoftScore
Default: -200
Description: How much to reward or penalize leaving a Recommends relationship
unresolved. This should typically be less than RemoveScore, or aptitude will
tend to remove packages rather than leaving their Recommendations unfixed. See
the section called “Resolving Dependencies Interactively” for details.
Option: Aptitude::ProblemResolver::UpgradeScore
Default: 30
Description: How much weight the problem resolver should give to upgrading (or
downgrading) a package to its candidate version, if the package was not already
going to be upgraded.
Option: Aptitude::Purge-Unused
Default: false
Description: If this option is true and Aptitude::Delete-Unused is also true,
then packages which are unused will be purged from the system, removing their
configuration files and perhaps other important data. For more information about
which packages are considered to be “unused”, see the section called “Managing
automatically installed packages”. THIS OPTION CAN CAUSE DATA LOSS! DO NOT
ENABLE IT UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!
Option: Aptitude::Recommends-Important
Default: true
Description: This is an obsolete configuration option that has been superseded
by APT::Install-Recommends. On startup, aptitude will copy
Aptitude::Recommends-Important (if it exists) to APT::Install-Recommends and
then clear Aptitude::Recommends-Important in your user configuration file.
Option: Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Installs
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, then when the “safe” dependency resolver
has been activated via --safe-resolver or by using the safe-upgrade command-line
action, the resolver will not be allowed to install packages that are not
currently installed.
Option: Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Upgrades
Default: false
Description: If this option is enabled, then when the “safe” dependency resolver
has been activated via --safe-resolver or by using the safe-upgrade command-line
action, the resolver will not be allowed to resolve dependencies by upgrading
packages.
Option: Aptitude::Sections::Descriptions
Default: See $prefix/share/aptitude/section-descriptions
Description: This option is a group whose members define the descriptions
displayed for each section when using the “section” package hierarchy grouping
policy. Descriptions are assigned to section trees based on the last component
of the name: for instance, a member of this group named “games” will be used to
describe the Sections “games”, “non-free/games”, and “non-free/desktop/games”.
Within the text of section descriptions, the string “\n” will be replaced by a
line-break, and the string “''” will be replaced by a double-quote character.
Option: Aptitude::Sections::Top-Sections
Default: "main"; "contrib"; "non-free"; "non-US";
Description: A configuration group whose elements are the names of the top-level
archive sections. The “topdir”, “subdir”, and “subdirs” grouping policies use
this list to interpret Section fields: if the first path element of a package's
Section is not contained in this list, or if its Section has only one element,
then the package will be grouped using the first member of this list as its
first path element. For example, if the first member of Top-Sections is “main”,
then a package whose Section is “games/arcade” will be treated as if its Section
field were “main/games/arcade”.
Option: Aptitude::Simulate
Default: false
Description: In command-line mode, causes aptitude to just display the actions
that would be performed (rather than actually performing them); in the visual
interface, causes aptitude to start in read-only mode regardless of whether you
are root or not. This is equivalent to the -s command-line option.
Option: Aptitude::Spin-Interval
Default: 500
Description: The number of milliseconds to delay in between updating the
“spinner” that appears while the problem resolver is running.
Option: Aptitude::Suggests-Important
Default: false
Description: This is an obsolete option; use APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant
instead. Setting this option to true has the same effect as setting
APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant to true.
Option: Aptitude::Suppress-Read-Only-Warning
Default: false
Description: If this option is false, aptitude will display a warning the first
time that you attempt to modify package states while aptitude is in read-only
mode.
Option: Aptitude::Theme
Default:
Description: The theme that aptitude should use; see the section called “Themes”
for more information.
Option: Aptitude::Track-Dselect-State
Default: true
Description: If this option is set to true, aptitude will attempt to detect when
a change to a package's state has been made using dselect or dpkg: for instance,
if you remove a package using dpkg, aptitude will not try to reinstall it. Note
that this may be somewhat buggy.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Advance-On-Action
Default: false
Description: If this option is set to true, changing a package's state (for
instance, marking it for installation) will cause aptitude to advance the
highlight to the next package in the current group.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Auto-Show-Reasons
Default: true
Description: If this option is set to true, selecting a package which is broken
or which appears to be causing other packages to be broken will cause the
information area to automatically display some reasons why the breakage might be
occuring.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Default-Grouping
Default: filter(missing),status,section(subdirs,passthrough),section(topdir)
Description: Sets the default grouping policy used for package lists. See the
section called “Customizing the package hierarchy” for additional information on
grouping policies.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Default-Package-View
Default:
Description: This option is a group whose members define the default layout of
aptitude's display. See the section called “Customizing the display layout” for
more information.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Default-Preview-Grouping
Default: action
Description: Sets the default grouping policy used for preview screens. See the
section called “Customizing the package hierarchy” for additional information on
grouping policies.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Default-Sorting
Default: name
Description: The default sorting policy of package views. See the section called
“Customizing how packages are sorted” for more information.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Description-Visible-By-Default
Default: true
Description: When a package list is first displayed, the information area (which
typically contains the long description of the current package) will be visible
if this option is true and hidden if it is false.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Exit-On-Last-Close
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, closing all the active views will quit
aptitude; otherwise, aptitude will not exit until you issue the command Actions
→ Quit (Q). See the section called “Working with multiple views” for more
information.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Fill-Text
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will format descriptions so that
each line is exactly the width of the screen.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Flat-View-As-First-View
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will display a flat view on
startup instead of the default view.
Option: Aptitude::UI::HelpBar
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, a line of information about important
keystrokes will be displayed at the top of the screen.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Incremental-Search
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will perform “incremental”
searches: as you type the search pattern, it will search for the next package
matching what you have typed so far.
Option: Aptitude::UI::InfoAreaTabs
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will display tabs at the top of
the information area (the pane at the bottom of the screen) describing the
different modes the area can be set to.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Keybindings
Default:
Description: This is a group whose members define the connections between
keystrokes and commands in aptitude. For more information, see the section
called “Customizing keybindings”.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Menubar-Autohide
Default: false
Description: If this option is set to true, the menu bar will be hidden while it
is not in use.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Minibuf-Download-Bar
Default: false
Description: If this option is set to true, aptitude will use a less obtrusive
mechanism to display the progress of downloads: a bar at the bottom of the
screen will appear which displays the current download status. While the
download is active, pressing q will abort it.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Minibuf-Prompts
Default: false
Description: If this option is true, some prompts (such as yes/no and
multiple-choice prompts) will be displayed at the bottom of the screen instead
of in dialog boxes.
Option: Aptitude::UI::New-Package-Commands
Default: true
Description: If this option is set to false, commands such as Package → Install
(+) will have the same deprecated behavior that they did in antique versions of
aptitude.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Package-Display-Format
Default: %c%a%M %p %Z %v %V
Description: This option controls the format string used to display packages in
package lists. For more information on format strings, see the section called
“Customizing how packages are displayed”.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Package-Header-Format
Default: %N %n @ %H #%B %u %o
Description: This option controls the format string used to display the header
line of package lists (ie, the line that appears between the package list and
the menu bar). For more information on format strings, see the section called
“Customizing how packages are displayed”.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Package-Status-Format
Default: %d
Description: This option controls the format string used to display the status
line of package lists (ie, the line that appears between the package list and
the information area). For more information on format strings, see the section
called “Customizing how packages are displayed”.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Pause-After-Download
Default: OnlyIfError
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will display a message after it
finishes downloading packages, asking you if you want to continue with the
installation. If it is OnlyIfError, a message will only be displayed if a
download failed. Otherwise, if the option is set to false, aptitude will
immediately proceed to the next screen after completing a download.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Preview-Limit
Default:
Description: The default filter applied to the preview screen; see the section
called “Search patterns” for details about its format.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Prompt-On-Exit
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will display a confirmation prompt
before shutting down.
Option: Aptitude::UI::Styles
Default:
Description: This is a configuration group whose contents define what textual
styles aptitude uses to display information. For more information, see the
section called “Customizing text colors and styles”.
Option: Aptitude::UI::ViewTabs
Default: true
Description: If this option is set to false, aptitude will not display “tabs”
describing the currently active views at the top of the screen.
Option: Aptitude::Warn-Not-Root
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will detect when you need root
privileges to do something, and ask you whether you want to switch to the root
account if you aren't root already. See the section called “Becoming root” for
more information.
Option: DebTags::Vocabulary
Default: /usr/share/debtags/vocabulary
Description: The location of the debtags vocabulary file; used to load in the
package tag metadata.
Option: Dir::Aptitude::state
Default: /var/lib/aptitude
Description: The directory in which aptitude's persistent state information is
stored.
Option: Quiet
Default: 0
Description: This controls the quietness of the command-line mode. Setting it to
a higher value will disable more progress indicators.

  Themes

A theme in aptitude is simply a collection of settings that “go together”.
Themes work by overriding the default values of options: if an option is not set
in the system configuration file or in your personal configuration file,
aptitude will use the setting from the current theme, if one is available,
before using the standard default value.

A theme is simply a named group under Aptitude::Themes; each configuration
option contained in the group will override the corresponding option in the
global configuration. For instance, if the Dselect theme is selected, the option
Aptitude::Themes::Dselect::Aptitude::UI::Package-Display-Format will override
the default value of the option Aptitude::UI::Package-Display-Format.

To select a theme, set the configuration option Aptitude::Theme to the name of
the theme; for instance,

Aptitude::Theme Vertical-Split;

The following themes are shipped with aptitude in
/usr/share/aptitude/aptitude-defaults:

Dselect

        This theme makes aptitude look and behave more like the legacy dselect
        package manager:

  Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
 f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
 --\ Installed Packages
   --\ Priority required
     --\ base - The Debian base system
 c   base  base-file 3.0.16      3.0.16      Debian base system miscellaneous fil
 c   base  base-pass 3.5.7       3.5.7       Debian base system master password a
 c   base  bash      2.05b-15    2.05b-15    The GNU Bourne Again SHell
 c   base  bsdutils  1:2.12-7    1:2.12-7    Basic utilities from 4.4BSD-Lite
 c   base  coreutils 5.0.91-2    5.0.91-2    The GNU core utilities
 c   base  debianuti 2.8.3       2.8.3       Miscellaneous utilities specific to
 c   base  diff      2.8.1-6     2.8.1-6     File comparison utilities
 base-files                      installed ; none                       required
 This package contains the basic filesystem hierarchy of a Debian system, and
 several important miscellaneous files, such as /etc/debian_version,
 /etc/host.conf, /etc/issue, /etc/motd, /etc/profile, /etc/nsswitch.conf, and
 others, and the text of several common licenses in use on Debian systems.







Vertical-Split

        This theme rearranges the display: instead of the current package's
        description appearing underneath the package list, it is displayed to
        the right of the package list. This theme is useful with very wide
        terminals, and perhaps also when editing the built-in hierarchy of
        packages.

  Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
 f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
 aptitude 0.2.14.1
 --\ Installed Packages                  Modern computers support the Advanced  #
   --\ admin - Administrative utilities  Configuration and Power Interface
     --\ main - The main Debian archive  (ACPI) to allow intelligent power
 i   acpid         1.0.3-19   1.0.3-19   management on your system and to query
 i   alien         8.44       8.44       battery and configuration status.
 i   anacron       2.3-9      2.3-9
 i   apt-show-vers 0.07       0.07       ACPID is a completely flexible, totally
 i A apt-utils     0.5.25     0.5.25     extensible daemon for delivering ACPI
 i   apt-watch     0.3.2-2    0.3.2-2    events. It listens on a file
 i   aptitude      0.2.14.1-2 0.2.14.1-2 (/proc/acpi/event) and when an event
 i   at            3.1.8-11   3.1.8-11   occurs, executes programs to handle the
 i   auto-apt      0.3.20     0.3.20     event. The programs it executes are
 i   cron          3.0pl1-83  3.0pl1-83  configured through a set of
 i   debconf       1.4.29     1.4.29     configuration files, which can be
 i   debconf-i18n  1.4.29     1.4.29     dropped into place by packages or by
 i A debootstrap   0.2.39     0.2.39     the admin.
 i A deborphan     1.7.3      1.7.3
 i   debtags       0.16       0.16       In order to use this package you need a
 i A defoma        0.11.8     0.11.8     recent Kernel (=>2.4.7). This can be
 i   discover      2.0.4-5    2.0.4-5    one including the patches on
 Utilities for using ACPI power management

Playing Minesweeper

In case you get tired of installing and removing packages, aptitude includes a
version of the classic game “Minesweeper”. To start it, select Actions → Play
Minesweeper; the initial Minesweeper board will appear:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
Minesweeper                                              10/10 mines  13 seconds





                                   +--------+
                                   |        |
                                   |        |
                                   |        |
                                   |        |
                                   |        |
                                   |        |
                                   |        |
                                   |        |
                                   +--------+






Within the rectangle that appears on the screen are hidden ten mines. Your goal
is to determine, through intuition, logic, and luck, where those mines are,
without setting any of them off! To do this, you must uncover all the squares
that do not contain mines; in doing so, you will learn important information
regarding which squares do contain mines. Beware, however: uncovering a square
that contains a mine will set it off, ending your game immediately!

To uncover a square (and find out whether a mine is hidden there), select the
square with the arrow keys and press Enter:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
Minesweeper                                             10/10 mines  387 seconds





                                   +--------+
                                   | 2......|
                                   | 2111...|
                                   |    1...|
                                   | 1111...|
                                   |11...111|
                                   |...113  |
                                   |1122    |
                                   |        |
                                   +--------+






As you can see, some of the hidden (blank) parts of the board have been revealed
in this screenshot. The squares containing a . are squares which are not next to
any mines; the numbers in the remaining squares indicate how many mines they are
next to.

If you think you know where a mine is, you can place a “flag” on it. To do this,
select the suspected square and press f. For instance, in the screenshot below,
I decided that the square on the left-hand side of the board looked
suspicious...

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
Minesweeper                                              9/10 mines  961 seconds





                                   +--------+
                                   | 2......|
                                   | 2111...|
                                   |    1...|
                                   |F1111...|
                                   |11...111|
                                   |...113  |
                                   |1122    |
                                   |        |
                                   +--------+






As you can see, an F appeared in the selected square. It is no longer possible
to uncover this square, even accidentally, until the flag is removed (by
pressing f again). Once you have placed flags on all the mines that are next to
a square (for instance, the squares labelled 1 next to the flag above), you can
“sweep” around the square. This is just a convenient shortcut to uncover all the
squares next to it (except those containing a flag, of course). For instance,
sweeping around the 1 above:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
Minesweeper                                              9/10 mines  2290 seconds





                                   +--------+
                                   | 2......|
                                   | 2111...|
                                   |221 1...|
                                   |F1111...|
                                   |11...111|
                                   |...113  |
                                   |1122    |
                                   |        |
                                   +--------+






Luckily (or was it luck?), my guess about the location of that mine was correct.
If I had been wrong, I would have lost immediately:

 Actions  Undo  Package  Search  Options  Views  Help
f10: Menu  ?: Help  q: Quit  u: Update  g: Download/Install/Remove Pkgs
Minesweeper                                   Minesweeper    Lost in 2388 seconds





                                   +--------+
                                   |^2......|
                                   |^2111...|
                                   |221^1...|
                                   |^1111...|
                                   |11...111|
                                   |...113^ |
                                   |1122* ^ |
                                   | ^ ^   ^|
                                   +--------+






When you lose, the locations of all the mines are revealed: unexploded mines are
indicated by a caret symbol (^), and the one you “stepped on” is indicated by an
asterisk (*).

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

^[7] I am pleased to say that the number of requests of this sort fell off
precipitously following the initial publication of this Guide. It would be a
happy occurrence if there was a connection between the two events.

^[8] This is sometimes referred to as an “install run”, even though you might be
upgrading or removing packages in addition to installing them.

^[9] As noted above, it does not indicate that the packages in the archive are
secure, or even non-malicious; it merely shows that they are genuine.

^[10] More precisely: they will be removed when there is no path via Depends,
PreDepends, or Recommends to them from a manually installed package. If
APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant is true, a Suggests relationship is also
enough to keep a package installed.

^[11] Or when immediate resolution is disabled.

^[12] The package with the highest dpkg priority, not the package with the
highest apt pin priority.

^[13] This limit was imposed because more complex cost structures could make it
difficult to optimize the resolver. Future versions of the program might remove
some of the restrictions if they turn out to be unnecessary.

^[14] aptitude will only treat the comma as special if there is a second
argument, so (for instance) “?name(apt,itude)” searches for the string
“apt,itude” in the Name field of packages.

While this behavior is well-defined, it may be surprising; I recommend using
quoted strings for any pattern that contains characters that could have a
special meaning.

^[15] Characters with a special meaning include: “+”, “-”, “.”, “(”, “)”, “|”,
“[”, “]”, “^”, “$”, and “?”. Note that some of these are also aptitude
metacharacters, so if you want to type (for instance) a literal “|”, it must be
double-escaped: “?description(\~|)” will match packages whose description
contains a vertical bar character (“|”).

^[16] The backslash escapes \\, \n, and \t are also available.

^[17] Astute readers will note that this is essentially a way to explicitly name
the variable in the λ-terms corresponding to the term. A typical term would have
the form “λ x . name-equals(x, pattern)”; giving this an explicit target makes x
visible in the search language.

^[18] This is provided largely for symmetry with ?true.

^[19] Currently tagging is not supported; this escape is for future use.

^[20] On some terminals, a “yellow” background will actually come out brown.

                 Chapter 3. aptitude frequently asked questions

        “What ... is your name?”                                          

        “I am Arthur, King of the Britons.”

        “What ... is your quest?”

        “I seek the Holy Grail!”

        “What ... is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

        “What do you mean? An African or a European swallow?”

        “Huh? I ... I don't kn---AAAAAUUUGGGHH!”
                                              -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail

3.1. How can I find exactly one package by name?

3.2. How can I find broken packages?

3.3. I want to select text, why doesn't aptitude let me disable the mouse?

3.1. How can I find exactly one package by name?
     As mentioned in the section called “Search patterns”, when you search for a
     package by name, the text you enter is actually a regular expression. Thus,
     the search pattern “^name$” will match only a package named name.

     For instance, you can find apt (but not aptitude or synaptic) by entering
     ^apt$; you can find g++ (but not g++-2.95 or g++-3.0) by entering ^g\+\+$.
3.2. How can I find broken packages?
     Use the command Search → Find Broken (b).
3.3. I want to select text, why doesn't aptitude let me disable the mouse?
     Normally, you cannot select text in an xterm while a program running in
     that terminal (such as aptitude) is using the mouse. However, you can
     override this behavior and perform a selection by holding the Shift key
     down while you click on the terminal.

                               Chapter 4. Credits

         No-one remembers the singer. The song remains.                  
                                               -- Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero

This section commemorates some of the people who have contributed to aptitude
over its lifetime.

[Note] Note
       This section is presently rather incomplete and will likely be updated
       and expanded as time goes on (in particular, there are many missing
       translation credits due to the huge number of sources of translations
       ^[21]). If you think you should be on this list, please email
       <dburrows@debian.org> with an explanation of why you think so.

Translations and internationalization

Brazilian translation

        Andre Luis Lopes, Gustavo Silva

Chinese translation

        Carlos Z.F. Liu

Czech translation

        Miroslav Kure

Danish translation

        Morten Brix Pedersen, Morten Bo Johansen

Dutch translation

        Luk Claes

Finnish translation

        Jaakko Kangasharju

French translation

        Martin Quinson, Jean-Luc Coulon

German translation

        Sebastian Schaffert, Erich Schubert, Sebastian Kapfer, Jens Seidel

Italian translation

        Danilo Piazzalunga

Japanese translation

        Yasuo Eto, Noritada Kobayashi

Lithuanian translation

        Darius ?itkevicius

Polish translation

        Michal Politowski

Portuguese translation

        Nuno Sénica, Miguel Figueiredo

Norwegian translation

        Håvard Korsvoll

Spanish translation

        Jordi Malloch, Ruben Porras

Swedish translation

        Daniel Nylander

Initial i18n patch

        Masato Taruishi

i18n triaging and maintainence

        Christian Perrier

Documentation

User's Manual

        Daniel Burrows

Programming

Program design and implementation

        Daniel Burrows

Support for the dpkg Breaks field

        Ian Jackson, Michael Vogt

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

^[21] It should be possible to compile a fairly complete list of i18n
contributors based on the ChangeLog, its references to the Debian bug tracking
system, and the revision history of aptitude, but doing so will require a large
investment of time that is not currently available.

                             Command-line reference

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Table of Contents

aptitude — high-level interface to the package manager

aptitude-create-state-bundle — bundle the current aptitude state

aptitude-run-state-bundle — unpack an aptitude state bundle and invoke aptitude
on it

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] 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 packages 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 packages 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 packages 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 packages 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] 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] 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 patterns 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] 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:

           • 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.

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

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

           • package to group versions by their package.

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

           • 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:

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

           • 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.

           • 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

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Name

aptitude-create-state-bundle — bundle the current aptitude state

Synopsis

aptitude-create-state-bundle [options...] output-file

Description

[Note] Note
       This command is mostly for internal use and bug reporting in exceptional
       cases, it is not intended for end-users under normal circumstances.

aptitude-create-state-bundle produces a compressed archive storing the files
that are required to replicate the current package archive state. The following
files and directories are included in the bundle:

  • $HOME/.aptitude

  • /var/lib/aptitude

  • /var/lib/apt

  • /var/cache/apt/*.bin

  • /etc/apt

  • /var/lib/dpkg/status

The output of this program can be used as an argument to
aptitude-run-state-bundle(1).

Options

--force-bzip2

        Override the autodetection of which compression algorithm to use. By
        default, aptitude-create-state-bundle uses bzip2(1) if it is available,
        and gzip(1) otherwise. Passing this option forces the use of bzip2 even
        if it doesn't appear to be available.

--force-gzip

        Override the autodetection of which compression algorithm to use. By
        default, aptitude-create-state-bundle uses bzip2(1) if it is available,
        and gzip(1) otherwise. Passing this option forces the use of gzip even
        if bzip2 is available.

--help

        Print a brief usage message, then exit.

--print-inputs

        Instead of creating a bundle, display a list of the files and
        directories that the program would include if it generated a bundle.

File format

The bundle file is simply a tar(1) file compressed with bzip2(1) or gzip(1),
with each of the input directory trees rooted at “.”.

See also

aptitude-run-state-bundle(1), aptitude(8), apt(8)

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Name

aptitude-run-state-bundle — unpack an aptitude state bundle and invoke aptitude
on it

Synopsis

aptitude-run-state-bundle [options...] input-file [ program [arguments...]]

Description

[Note] Note
       This command is mostly for internal use and bug reporting in exceptional
       cases, it is not intended for end-users under normal circumstances.

aptitude-run-state-bundle unpacks the given aptitude state bundle created by
aptitude-create-state-bundle(1) to a temporary directory, invokes program on it
with the supplied arguments, and removes the temporary directory afterwards. If
program is not supplied, it defaults to aptitude(8).

Options

The following options may occur on the command-line before the input file.
Options following the input file are presumed to be arguments to aptitude.

--append-args

        Place the options that give the location of the state bundle at the end
        of the command line when invoking program, rather than at the beginning
        (the default is to place options at the beginning).

--help

        Display a brief usage summary.

--prepend-args

        Place the options that give the location of the state bundle at the
        beginning of the command line when invoking program, overriding any
        previous --append-args (the default is to place options at the
        beginning).

--no-clean

        Do not remove the unpacked state directory after running aptitude. You
        might want to use this if, for instance, you are debugging a problem
        that appears when aptitude's state file is modified. When aptitude
        finishes running, the name of the state directory will be printed so
        that you can access it in the future.

        This option is enabled automatically by --statedir.

--really-clean

        Delete the state directory after running aptitude, even if --no-clean or
        --statedir was supplied.

--statedir

        Instead of treating the input file as a state bundle, treat it as an
        unpacked state bundle. For instance, you can use this to access the
        state directory that was created by a prior run with --no-clean.

--unpack

        Unpack the input file to a temporary directory, but don't actually run
        aptitude.

See also

aptitude-create-state-bundle(1), aptitude(8), apt(8)
