Does the Software Center log installations?

Question

Does the Ubuntu Software Center keep a log of everything it has installed? So I could just parse this log to convert it into a script full of 'sudo apt-get instals' or something. And then the next time I install Ubuntu I could just this script to re-install everything.

Answer 1

Yes, It maintains a log in /var/log/apt/history.log. Older histories gets compressed as .gz files. It contains installation, upgrade and removal logs.
For keeping existing software backups you can use dpkg-repack to make .deb files out of installed files. Here.

Answer 2

Yes it does. You're looking for the file:

~/.cache/software-center/apthistory.p

I have no idea how to parse it or how to understand the format it's in, but that's not the question you asked.

Answer 3

If this is for personal use, there is a way to sync programs built in to the software center. If you just click File -> "Sync Between Computers". You just have to create an Ubuntu Software Center account. Here is a how-to with more information which may be relevant, http://www.howtogeek.com/111989/how-to-sync-quickly-reinstall-applications-on-ubuntu/.

Answer 4

You can also get a list of all manually installed packages which are not a dependency of another package by running this command:

$ deborphan -a | awk '{print $2}' | sort > packages.list

For reinstalling these packages, use:

$ sudo apt-get install $(cat packages.list | tr '\n' ' ')