Debian – How to get ALL kinds of reverse package dependencies: reverse-depends pendant for non-Ubuntu distributions

debdebiandependenciespackage-managementrpm

I would like to find all possible reverse dependencies (no need for recursive reverse dependencies) of a certain package p, that is, I want to find all packages which depend on p. This shall include reverse dependencies on p's source package and also reverse build dependencies.

If I understand it correctly, there are 4 types of reverse dependencies:

r depends on p
r depends on source package of p
Building r requires p
Building r requires the source package of p

I would like to find all of them.

For Debian, there is apt-rdepends -r but the manual says:

 apt-rdepends cannot do reverse build-dependencies.

For Ubuntu, there is reverse-depends, which seems to let me do what I want but it seems to be Ubuntu specific, as the manual pages states it is

Provided by: ubuntu-dev-tools_0.153_all

Are there reverse-depends-like tools which will work for non-Ubuntu distributions, especially those using deb and rpm packages?

Best Answer

In Debian and derivatives there are six types of dependencies:

pre-depends
depends
recommends
suggests
build-depends
build-depends-indep

Each of these give corresponding reverse dependencies. To list them you can use grep-dctrl:

grep-dctrl -FBuild-Depends mypackage -w -sPackage /var/lib/apt/lists/*Sources

will list all the packages which build-depend on mypackage, i.e. mypackage's non-recursive reverse build-dependencies.

Reverse depends

Reverse depends means you want a list of packages that depend on a given package.

Example

$ apt-cache rdepends jetty
jetty
Reverse Depends:
  solr-jetty
  libjetty-java
  libjetty-extra-java
  libjetty-extra
  libini4j-java
  guacamole

Recursive depends

Using a tool such as apt-rdepends shows what packages a given package is dependent on, plus what packages these packages are also dependent on. This is performed recursively until the entire dependency tree is exhausted.

Example

$ apt-rdepends jetty | head -10
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
jetty
  Depends: adduser
  Depends: apache2-utils
  Depends: default-jre-headless
  Depends: java5-runtime-headless
  Depends: jsvc
  Depends: libjetty-java (>= 6.1.26-1ubuntu1)
adduser
  Depends: debconf
  Depends: debconf-2.0
...

Above you can see that jetty is dependent on adduser which itself is dependent on debconf.

Reverse recursive depends

This one shows what packages depend on a package that depends on a given package. This is again done recursively.

Example

$ apt-rdepends --reverse jetty 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
jetty
  Reverse Depends: solr-jetty (>= 3.6.1+dfsg-0ubuntu2)
solr-jetty
  Reverse Depends: chef-solr (>= 10.12.0+dfsg-1)
chef-solr
  Reverse Depends: chef-expander (>= 10.12.0-1)
  Reverse Depends: chef-server-api (>= 10.12.0-1)
chef-expander
chef-server-api
  Reverse Depends: chef-server-webui (>= 10.12.0+dfsg-1)
chef-server-webui

Again here as the tree is explored the first package that lists jetty as a dependency is solr-jetty, which in turn is listed as a dependency for chef-solr, etc.

Types of depends

It can get a little confusing but there are a variety of depends. Looking at the man page for apt-rdepends:

   -f, --follow=DEPENDS
        A comma-separated list of DEPENDS types to follow recursively. 
        By default, it only follows the Depends and PreDepends types.

        The possible values for DEPENDS are: Depends, PreDepends, Suggests,
        Recommends, Conflicts, Replaces, and Obsoletes.

        In --build-depends mode, the possible values are: Build-Depends, 
        Build-Depends-Indep, Build-Conflicts, Build-Conflicts-Indep.

APT Package Management – Ignore Unfulfilled Dependencies

You can’t make apt ignore dependencies, but you can create a fake gstreamer0.10-plugins-good package which will satisfy the missing dependency. The simplest way to do this is using equivs:

install equivs
```
sudo apt install equivs
```

generate a template control file

equivs-control gstreamer0.10-plugins-good.control

fix the package name

sed -i 's/<package name; defaults to equivs-dummy>/gstreamer0.10-plugins-good/g' gstreamer0.10-plugins-good.control

build the package

equivs-build gstreamer0.10-plugins-good.control

install it

sudo dpkg -i gstreamer0.10-plugins-good_1.0_all.deb

That should satisfy the opera package’s dependency.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Dependency Check – Difference Between Recursive and Reverse Dependency Check

Reverse depends

Example

Recursive depends

Example

Reverse recursive depends

Example

Types of depends

APT Package Management – Ignore Unfulfilled Dependencies

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