list all suggested packages for currently installed packages

Question

Every time I install a package:

sudo apt-get install <pkg>

apt-get displays a list of suggested packages. I have simply ignored these so far, but some of these suggestions are actually good (and some are not). I would like to recover all these lists into one big list (so that I can review it and decide if there is some package I want to install), but I could not see them in /var/log/apt/history.log.

That is, I'm looking for something like

list = []
for package in installed_packages:
    list.append(package.name)
print list

Answer 1

Using only aptitude, you can use the search pattern:

aptitude search '?reverse-suggests(~i)!(~i)'

and similarly, for recommends:

aptitude search '?reverse-recommends(~i)!(~i)'

All aptitude search options are available in the user's manual.

Answer 2

Show the Suggests for all packages installed in a one-liner:

dpkg-query -W -f='${Package} (status: ${Status}) suggests: ${Suggests}\n' \
  | grep 'status: install ok installed' | grep -v 'suggests: $'

It queries the dpkg database, lists all locally-known packages marked other than "nothing" (also lists uninstalled), in a custom output format, then filtered for really installed packages and filtered for packages without suggests.

Answer 3

I found this very useful, I created this script for personal use, is not perfect or well written, I did now in 5 min. after reading this thread.

I paste it here if some1 can found it useful.

Script