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John Feminella
Asked: 2014-01-10 06:31:16 +0800 CST

Given a package name, how can I find out what will change if I install the package?

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Given a set of apt commands and packages to apply (e.g. install foo bar baz, autoremove quux blerg bang), is there a way to calculate the diff of the system state that will be produced if I run the commands?

By "system state" I don't merely mean whether a given package will install/remove other packages, but what kinds of actual changes get produced -- files being deleted or moved, scripts getting run, et cetera.

apt

2 Answers

  1. You can run apt-get in simulate mode, e.g.:

    with

    sudo apt-get --simulate install foo bar baz

    or without sudo also

    apt-get --simulate install foo bar baz

    This won't change anything on your system but will print out what will apt-get do when you run that command.

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  2. You are probably looking for more debugging. The problem with this is... that the information is way too much to be useful for anyone without knowledge of what he's reading. But here it is:

    sudo apt-get -o Debug::pkgDPkgProgressReporting=true -o Debug::pkgPackageManager=true -o Debug::pkgDPkgPM=true install package

    But hey, there's a bunch of other ways you can do this. For example:

    apt-get --print-uris install package
## This will print a lot of url. Download them.
wget uris
dpkg-deb -c *.deb

    This will show you the contents. You will need to evaluate the control scripts (post/pre inst/rm) separated.

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