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Asked: 2020-03-04 03:54:26 +0800 CST

How to check if graphviz-dev is installed on different Ubuntu versions?

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I have a script installing graphviz-dev on my machines. The relevant line is sudo apt install graphviz-dev

In Ubuntu 16.04 it installs a package called graphviz-dev, and dpkg -s graphviz-dev will return a good response

However, on Ubuntu 18.04 it installs a different package - libgraphviz-dev, and now dpkg -s graphviz-dev won't work, but dpkg -s libgraphviz-dev would.

Is there a better way to check if the installation of said package (graphviz-dev) was successful, even if APT decided to redirect and install a different package instead?

package-management dpkg apt 16.04 18.04

1 Answers

  1. As far I can see the package description for *graphviz-dev is always the same (looked from 16.04 LTS to upcoming 20.04 LTS):

    graphviz libs and headers against which to build applications

    so you can use simple dpkg -l with pipe and one-line scripting:

    dpkg -l | grep "graphviz libs and headers" && \
echo "*graphviz-dev is installed :)" || echo "*graphviz-dev is not installed :("

    For example on 16.04 LTS it will return:

    ii libgraphviz-dev 2.38.0-12ubuntu2.1 amd64 graphviz libs and headers against which to build applications
    *graphviz-dev is installed :)

    You can install *graphviz-dev in universal way like below:

    sudo apt-get install {lib,}graphviz-dev
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