The usual way to handle this is to just do
#dpkg -i packagename
and then resolve the dependencies after the event by doing
#apt-get -f install
If the dependencies cannot be satisfied, apt will normally remove the package for you. Of course, if it doesn't you can do so yourself. This procedure should not mark the packages as manually installed.
The dpkg -s command returns the status of installed packages. For example, on my system, if I run it for firefox which is installed and nedit which isn't, I get:
$ dpkg -s firefox
Package: firefox
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: web
Installed-Size: 94341
Maintainer: Clement Lefebvre <root@linuxmint.com>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 41.0~linuxmint1+betsy
Replaces: firefox-l10n-af, firefox-l10n-ar, firefox-l10n-be, firefox-l10n-bg, firefox-l10n-bn-bd, firefox-l10n-ca, firefox-l10n-cs, firefox-l10n-da, firefox-l10n-de, firefox-l10n-el, firefox-l10n-en-gb, firefox-l10n-en-us, firefox-l10n-eo, firefox-l10n-es, firefox-l10n-et, firefox-l10n-eu, firefox-l10n-fa, firefox-l10n-fi, firefox-l10n-fr, firefox-l10n-fy, firefox-l10n-gl, firefox-l10n-gu, firefox-l10n-he, firefox-l10n-hi, firefox-l10n-hr, firefox-l10n-hu, firefox-l10n-id, firefox-l10n-is, firefox-l10n-it, firefox-l10n-ja, firefox-l10n-kn, firefox-l10n-ko, firefox-l10n-lt, firefox-l10n-lv, firefox-l10n-nb, firefox-l10n-nl, firefox-l10n-nn, firefox-l10n-pl, firefox-l10n-pt, firefox-l10n-pt-br, firefox-l10n-ro, firefox-l10n-ru, firefox-l10n-sk, firefox-l10n-sl, firefox-l10n-sq, firefox-l10n-sr, firefox-l10n-sv, firefox-l10n-th, firefox-l10n-tr, firefox-l10n-uk, firefox-l10n-zh
Provides: gnome-www-browser, www-browser
Breaks: firefox-l10n-en-us
Description: The Firefox web browser
The Mozilla Firefox Web Browser.
$ dpkg -s nedit
dpkg-query: package 'nedit' is not installed and no information is available
Use dpkg --info (= dpkg-deb --info) to examine archive files,
and dpkg --contents (= dpkg-deb --contents) to list their contents.
So, you can use that command to check whether a package is installed:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
run_install()
{
## Prompt the user
read -p "Do you want to install missing libraries? [Y/n]: " answer
## Set the default value if no answer was given
answer=${answer:Y}
## If the answer matches y or Y, install
[[ $answer =~ [Yy] ]] && apt-get install ${boostlibnames[@]}
}
boostlibnames=("libboost-serialization1.55.0" "libboost-thread1.55.0"
"libboost-date-time1.55.0" "libboost-signals1.55.0" "nedit")
## Run the run_install function if sany of the libraries are missing
dpkg -s "${boostlibnames[@]}" >/dev/null 2>&1 || run_install
Best Answer
With a little bit
awk: