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given a package name, I want to find how much space would be freed up if the package, and its dependencies, were deleted.

As dependencies might be shared between packages, maybe the right way to put it is: How much space does a package take, including all dependencies that are only beeing used by this package

I would prefer CLI solutions, because I would use them in scripts

2
  • apt-cache show packagename lists, among other things, the installed size of a package and the dependencies of a package. There's also apt-cache rdepends package to list the packages that use that package. You might want to start there. Jul 2, 2014 at 18:46
  • @saiarcot895 - post that as an answer please
    – Panther
    Jul 2, 2014 at 18:54

4 Answers 4

21
+50

Simplest and bug free way to get the space used by a program and all its dependencies is to use apt itself. Note dependencies that are not used by another program, but installed with a package, is not considered as they are not removed.
Simply

sudo apt-get --assume-no autoremove PACKAGENAME

or

apt-space-used-by() { sudo apt-get --assume-no autoremove $@ | grep freed | cut -d' ' -f4-5 ;}

usage apt-space-used-by PACKAGENAME

This python script looks promising (bigpkg - find packages that require a lot of space on your system)

5
  • isn't this python script for Arch ?
    – josinalvo
    Jul 8, 2014 at 20:42
  • we should first run "sudo apt-get --assume-no autoremove" to see if there are packages the system wants to remove anyway (independent of the package you are thinking of removing)
    – josinalvo
    Apr 8, 2015 at 17:09
  • Is't thatv what I answered ? You need execute 'purge' after 'remove'
    – totti
    Apr 9, 2015 at 10:42
  • I mean: run this with no PACKAGENAME, get a number run with PACKAGENAME, get another. subtract
    – josinalvo
    Apr 9, 2015 at 12:21
  • you are right, and that's special case.
    – totti
    Apr 13, 2015 at 5:50
6
  • Simply try following command ( to get disk space freed by purge):

    echo -n | sudo apt-get purge <package> | grep "disk space will be freed"
    

    or

    echo -n | sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove <package> | grep "disk space will be freed"
    

    where replace <package> with your package-name ( example: gimp)

    This will not purge package with dependencies but only gives how much disk space will be freed with help of grep!


  • Using dpkg --print-avail or apt-cache show:

    apt-cache show <package> | grep "Installed-Size"
    

    or

    dpkg --print-avail <package> | grep "Installed-Size"
    

    This will display installed size of <package>.

    Example:

    $ apt-cache show gimp | grep "Installed-Size"
    Installed-Size: 15024
    

  • Sort list of installed packages by size

    dpkg-query -W -f='${Installed-Size;8}  ${Package}\n' | sort -n
    

    You can use more for page-wise:

    dpkg-query -W -f='${Installed-Size;8}  ${Package}\n' | sort -n | more
    

    Above list packages according to size acceding, you can use tail to list packages consuming top size as follows:

    dpkg-query -W -f='${Installed-Size;8}  ${Package}\n' | sort -n | tail
    

  • Using dpigs (from man dpigs):

    dpigs - Show which installed packages occupy the most space

     dpigs sorts the installed packages by size and outputs the largest ones. Per default dpigs displays the largest 10 packages. You can change
       this value by using the -n option (see "OPTIONS"). The information is taken from the dpkg status file with grep-status(1) 

    This Can be installed by: sudo apt-get install debian-goodies
    Example of run command

    $ dpigs
    115449 wine1.6-i386
    110356 linux-image-extra-3.13.0-24-generic
    103828 libreoffice-core
    86240 fonts-horai-umefont
    74016 libreoffice-common
    72709 liboxideqtcore0
    61736 linux-headers-3.13.0-24
    60821 libpyzy-1.0-0
    59477 firefox
    59443 thunderbird
    

  • Finding size of Unused package:-

    popularity-contest (8) - list the most popular Debian packages
    popcon-largest-unused (8) - List size of unused packages
    

    First run popularity-contest and then popcon-largest-unused, This will help you to find size of unused package. Visit man-pages for more information.


I tried my best to provide useful commands by steps.
Hope these helps!

1
  • What're the units of the "installed size" from dpkg/aptcache ? Like, bytes, kilobytes…?
    – Hi-Angel
    Dec 16, 2016 at 9:37
2

apt-cache show packagename lists, among other things, the installed size of a package and the dependencies of a package. There's also apt-cache rdepends packagename to list the packages that use that package.

You might want to use the latter command and apt-cache policy packagename to determine if a reverse-depdendency is installed.

2
  • This size does not appear to be human readable. Jan 4, 2016 at 23:49
  • 1
    The Installed-Size is in kilobytes, whereas Size is in bytes. I should have mentioned that in my answer. Jan 5, 2016 at 19:28
1

Here is a script which does that. No machine-friendly output though.

sudo apt-get install python-apt

and you're ready to go.

#!/usr/bin/env python2
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

from __future__ import (absolute_import, division,
                        print_function, unicode_literals)
import apt
from apt.cache import Filter, FilteredCache

MB = 1024*1024

class InstalledFilter(Filter):
    def apply(self, pkg):
        return pkg.is_installed

def iter_base_deps(cache, package):
    deps = []
    version = package.installed
    for dep_type in ('Depends', 'PreDepends', 'Recommends'):
        deps.extend(version.get_dependencies(dep_type))
    for dep in deps:
        for base_dep in dep:
            if base_dep.name in cache:
                yield base_dep

def main():
    package_ref_count = {}
    results = []

    cache = FilteredCache(apt.Cache())
    cache.set_filter(InstalledFilter())
    for package in cache:
        for base_dep in iter_base_deps(cache, package):
            if base_dep.name in package_ref_count:
                package_ref_count[base_dep.name] += 1
            else:
                package_ref_count[base_dep.name] = 1

    for package in cache:
        base_deps_size = 0
        base_deps = []
        for base_dep in iter_base_deps(cache, package):
            if package_ref_count[base_dep.name] == 1:
                base_deps.append(base_dep)
                base_deps_size += cache[base_dep.name].installed.installed_size
        total_size = package.installed.installed_size + base_deps_size
        results.append((total_size, package, base_deps_size, base_deps))

    for total_size, package, base_deps_size, base_deps in sorted(results, reverse=True):
        if package.name in package_ref_count:
            continue
        if total_size < MB:
            break
        self_size = package.installed.installed_size
        base_dep_count = len(base_deps)
        print('{:.1f} MB  {}'.format(total_size/MB, package.name) + \
              (' with {} deps'.format(base_dep_count) if base_dep_count else ''))
        if base_dep_count:
            print('    {:.1f} MB  self'.format(self_size/MB))
            for base_dep in base_deps:
                size = cache[base_dep.name].installed.installed_size
                print('    {:.1f} MB  {}'.format(size/MB, base_dep.name))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Example output:

72.6 MB  gthumb with 4 deps
    3.0 MB  self
    61.0 MB  libwebkit2gtk-3.0-25
    8.0 MB  gthumb-data
    0.1 MB  gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
    0.5 MB  flex
2
  • Thank you. This is what I want, a list of biggest package, with the size including dependencies. However the output is not complete, it accounts for less than a gigabyte. My system uses about 8gigs. Most of it has to be packages - I am sure - I hardly have any data.
    – Rolf
    Jan 15, 2018 at 12:37
  • @Rolf, I'm glad it was useful. Indeed, a lot of packages are not listed, that happens if a package is depended by several others. I've tried plotting dependencies as a graph, that way user could see all the packages and all the dependencies. But it turns to a complete mess, a ball of spaghetti. Sorry for late reply. Feb 4, 2018 at 0:03

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