Is there a way to see the installed versions of all dependencies of a package?

Question

I'd like to be able to output a list of all the dependencies of an installed package, including the version numbers of the dependencies that I have installed.

Answer 1

If you need a customized output, it could be a good option to implement a script to accomplish this task using python-apt:

import argparse
from itertools import chain
from collections import deque
import apt

def main(args):
    packages_seen = set()
    dependencies = deque()

    def print_package(package):
        print package.name, package.installedVersion
        packages_seen.add(package.name)

        or_dependencies = [dependency.or_dependencies
                           for dependency in package.installedDependencies]
        dependencies.extend(chain.from_iterable(or_dependencies))

    cache = apt.cache.Cache()
    package = cache[args.package_name]
    print_package(package)

    while dependencies:
        dependency = dependencies.popleft()
        package_name = dependency.name

        # Skip virtual packages                                                                                                          
        if package_name not in cache:
            continue

        if package_name not in packages_seen:
            package = cache[dependency.name]
            print_package(package)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser('Print all package dependencies '
                                     'and their installed version')
    parser.add_argument('package_name', help='Package name')
    args = parser.parse_args()

    main(args)

Example output:

$ python depends.py sqlite
sqlite 2.8.17-6.1ubuntu1
libc6 2.13-20ubuntu5
libreadline6 6.2-2ubuntu1
libsqlite0 2.8.17-6.1ubuntu1
libc-bin 2.13-20ubuntu5
libgcc1 1:4.6.1-9ubuntu3
tzdata 2011n-0ubuntu0.11.10
readline-common 6.2-2ubuntu1
libtinfo5 5.9-1ubuntu5
multiarch-support 2.13-20ubuntu5
gcc-4.6-base 4.6.1-9ubuntu3
debconf 1.5.40ubuntu1
dpkg 1.16.0.3ubuntu5
install-info 4.13a.dfsg.1-8ubuntu1
perl-base 5.12.4-4
libbz2-1.0 1.0.5-6ubuntu1
libselinux1 2.0.98-1.1
zlib1g 1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3ubuntu3
coreutils 8.5-1ubuntu6
xz-utils 5.0.0-2
libacl1 2.2.51-3
libattr1 1:2.4.46-3
liblzma2 5.0.0-2

Answer 2

use apt-cache

Using firefox as an example :

apt-cache showpkg firefox | less

to quit less type q. I piped it to less as the output can be long. You can pipe it to a file if you wish.

To show your installed packages, use dpkg

dpkg -l
dpkg -l | grep firefox

Answer 3

I normally use rdepends for that, install it with sudo apt-get install apt-rdepends or look for in the Ubuntu Software Center.

After installing the program you can use it simply by opening a terminal and typing sudo apt-rdepends <package_name>.

It will show you all the dependencies any package that is in your apt lists required to install and all the dependencies of a package that you might be thinking about installing.

It shows the information in a tree diagram where all the dependencies from one package are compared against all the dependencies of the each package dependency... (and so).

ie:

sudo apt-rdepends sqlite

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
sqlite3
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
  Depends: libreadline6 (>= 6.0)
  Depends: libsqlite3-0 (>= 3.6.18)
libc6
  Depends: libc-bin (= 2.13-20ubuntu5)
  Depends: libgcc1
  Depends: tzdata
libc-bin
libgcc1
  Depends: gcc-4.6-base (= 4.6.1-9ubuntu3)
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.4)
  PreDepends: multiarch-support
gcc-4.6-base
multiarch-support
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.13-0ubuntu6)
tzdata
  Depends: debconf (>= 0.5)
  Depends: debconf-2.0
debconf
  PreDepends: perl-base (>= 5.6.1-4)
perl-base
  PreDepends: dpkg (>= 1.14.20)
  PreDepends: libc6 (>= 2.11)
dpkg
  PreDepends: coreutils (>= 5.93-1)
  PreDepends: libbz2-1.0
  PreDepends: libc6 (>= 2.11)
  PreDepends: libselinux1 (>= 1.32)
  PreDepends: xz-utils
  PreDepends: zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4)
coreutils
  PreDepends: libacl1 (>= 2.2.11-1)
  PreDepends: libattr1 (>= 2.4.41-1)
  PreDepends: libc6 (>= 2.7)
  PreDepends: libselinux1 (>= 1.32)
libacl1
  Depends: libattr1 (>= 2.4.41-1)
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
  PreDepends: multiarch-support
libattr1
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
  PreDepends: multiarch-support
libselinux1
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.8)
  PreDepends: multiarch-support
libbz2-1.0
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
xz-utils
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7)
  Depends: liblzma2 (>= 5.0.0)
liblzma2
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
zlib1g
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
  PreDepends: multiarch-support
debconf-2.0
libreadline6
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.11)
  Depends: libtinfo5 (>= 5.6+20070908)
  Depends: readline-common
libtinfo5
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
readline-common
  Depends: dpkg (>= 1.15.4)
  Depends: install-info
install-info
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
libsqlite3-0
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4)
  PreDepends: multiarch-support

After that if you want to see if the package is installed in your system simply use this command

dpkg-query -l <package_name>

It will show you if the package is installed, ie

dpkg -l firefox

+++-==============-==============-============================================
ii  firefox        8.0+build1-0ub Safe and easy web browser from Mozilla

The ii in front of the package means that its installed.