How to know the recommended/suggested packages using terminal?

Question

In synaptic if you right-click a package you will see a sub-menu called recommended and another sub-menu called suggested.

How can I see the recommended and suggested packages for a specific package in the terminal?

Answer 1

Use aptitude show. For example:

aptitude show vlc

Answer 2

You can use aptitude search with ?reverse-depType(pattern):

For example

aptitude search '?reverse-recommends(?narrow(?version(CURRENT),^freemind$))'

will show you the recommends of the currently installed freemind package.

Note that you should use ^packagename$ and not just packagename, because otherwise you will also find the recommends of packages containing packagename in their name.

And you might want to use ?narrow(?version(CURRENT), ...) or something similiar to show only the recommends of the current version, otherwise you will see the recommends of all available versions in the repositories.

For suggests use ?reverse-suggests instead.

Also you can look at the Search Term Reference

Answer 3

Try:

apt-cache depends PACKAGE

or, to get also other info on the PACKAGE, use:

apt-cache showpkg PACKAGE