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?
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
Try:
apt-cache depends PACKAGE
or, to get also other info on the PACKAGE, use:
apt-cache showpkg PACKAGE
apt-*
commands.
apt-cache depends PACKAGE | grep -E '(Rec|Sug}'
to filter just for the important stuff.
You can use the info
flag
apt info package-name
or more succinctly
apt info package-name | grep -B 1 'Recommends'