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Nathan Osman
Asked: 2011-11-02 09:57:38 +0800 CST

How to install only the dependencies of a package?

  • 772

Running sudo apt-get install <PACKAGE> will install the package, its dependencies, and any other recommended packages.

However, there does not seem to be a way to install only the dependencies of a package and exclude the package itself.

How would one go about doing this?

package-management

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    This will install all packages in the package's Depends and PreDepends field:

    sudo apt-get install $(apt-cache depends <PACKAGE> | grep Depends | sed "s/.*ends:\ //" | tr '\n' ' ')

    Basically you ask for all dependencies, filter out the (Pre)Depends, and format that output for apt-get.

    One problem are dependencies like

    Depends: pulseaudio
  pulseaudio:i386

    or virtual packages like

    Depends: <java6-runtime-headless>
  default-jre-headless
  openjdk-6-jre-headless

    So: use with care - it doesn't work in all cases!

    • 29

  2. If you don't mind copy/past, just simulate an apt-get install with -s. That way you will see which other packages will get installed and/or upgrade, then you just remove the package name you don't want to install from that list and voila.

    sudo apt-get install -s <package>

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  3. apt-get build-dep <package> will do the trick.

    • 5

  4. To list all dependencies of a given package not being installed, you could use aptitude

    aptitude search '!~i?reverse-depends("^PACKAGE_NAME$")'

    To install the dependencies

    aptitude search '!~i?reverse-depends("^PACKAGE_NAME$")' -F "%p" | xargs sudo apt-get install

    Examples

    • List the dependencies

      % aptitude search '!~i?reverse-depends("^mc$")'
p    mc-data         - Midnight Commander - a powerful file manager -- data files

    • Show only the package name

      % aptitude search '!~i?reverse-depends("^mc$")' -F "%p"
mc-data

    • Install the dependencies for, e.g. mc

      % aptitude search '!~i?reverse-depends("^mc$")' -F "%p" | xargs sudo apt-get install     
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  mc-data
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1.166 kB of archives.
After this operation, 5.550 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ wily/universe mc-data all 3:4.8.13-3 [1.166 kB]
Fetched 1.166 kB in 0s (1.250 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package mc-data.
(Reading database ... 606748 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../mc-data_3%3a4.8.13-3_all.deb ...
Unpacking mc-data (3:4.8.13-3) ...
Processing triggers for doc-base (0.10.6) ...
Processing 1 added doc-base file...
Registering documents with scrollkeeper...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.4-1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.15-0ubuntu1) ...
Setting up mc-data (3:4.8.13-3) ...
    • 5

  5. You can parse the output of an apt install simulation to do this, here's a bash function to do so for you:

    apt-install-depends() {
    local pkg="$1"
    apt-get install -s "$pkg" \
      | sed -n \
        -e "/^Inst $pkg /d" \
        -e 's/^Inst \([^ ]\+\) .*$/\1/p' \
      | xargs apt-get install
}

    Usage:

    apt-install-depends mopidy
    • 1

  6. To install dependencies only, you can use apt-cache show package | grep Depends. This will give you a list of dependencies:

    apt-cache show apache2 | grep Depends
Depends: apache2-mpm-worker (= 2.2.22-6ubuntu5.1) | apache2-mpm-prefork (= 2.2.22-6ubuntu5.1) | apache2-mpm-event (= 2.2.22-6ubuntu5.1) | apache2-mpm-itk (= 2.2.22-6ubuntu5.1), apache2.2-common (= 2.2.22-6ubuntu5.1)

    then you can decide what package install with apt-get. There is also aptitude in the interactive mode, you look for the package select it and then install it's dependencies:

    enter image description here

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