59

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?

Nathan Osman
  • 32,495

6 Answers6

29

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!

htorque
  • 66,086
9

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>

bksunday
  • 231
5

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) ...
cl-netbox
  • 31,491
A.B.
  • 92,125
4

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

Eliah Kagan
  • 119,640
Laudeci
  • 97
2

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
muru
  • 207,228
trevorjay
  • 61
1

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

declension
  • 314
Braiam
  • 69,112