Easy way to get (recursive) dependency tree ?

[Florian Diesch]

patraulea <ulist at gs1.ubuntuforums.org> wrote:

> I decided to see what the Dapper installer looks like so I got the
> desktop ISO, installed in server mode and got stumped after seeing the
> complete dependency list for gnome-desktop-environment (I still believe
> in a GUI desktop in a 1GB partition). 

IMHO it's easier not to install gnome-desktop-environment but only the
packages you want.

debfoster is a nice tool to trim down your installation.


> Trying to find out where GDB came from ... a dependency tree would be
> really useful, right ? Well looking thru `man apt-cache` I came across
> de dotty command. And found out the hard way that it can't cope with
> large graphs such as the one for gnome-desktop-environment.

It works fine with SVG output. Use e.g. sodipodi to view the result.



> In case you're still reading and can spare a hint, I'd really like to
> hear what an easy way to get a dependency tree (yes, like Gentoo's
> emerge -pt) is. 

How does the output of emerge -pt look like? IMHO it's really difficult
to display a big dependcy graph (it's not necessary a tree) like
e.g. between gnome-desktop-environment and libc6




   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/>