Easy way to get (recursive) dependency tree ?

[Florian Diesch]

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

> Florian Diesch Wrote: 

>> > 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
>
> It looks simply like this ...
>
> gnome-desktop-envirnonment
>
> ..gnome-core
>
> ....gtk
>
> ......libc6
>
> ......glib
>
> ....nautilus
>
> [...]
>
> ... and it's pretty useful because I can figure out where the need for
> glib comes from by looking up.
>
>
> (note that nautilus also needs gtk but gtk only shows up the first time
> it's needed, so the output looks like a tree. 

I never thought of this kind of simplification but it seems to be useful
in some cases. Maybe ask to author of apt-cache to include it.


How should it handle virtual packages (like mail-transport-agent) branches
(like postfix | mail-transport-agent)?


> I think the dependenciesform a DAG anyway.) 

There are at least small circles like {vegastrike, vegastrike-data},
maybe bigger ones too (there are if you include Recommends: or Suggests:).



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