How to determine the size of a package while using apt prior to downloading?

Question

When using apt-get install <package_name>, and there are dependencies that need to be downloaded, the terminal outputs names of additional packages and total size, and asks for confirmation before downloading.

But, when dependencies are satisfied and nothing but the named package needs to be downloaded there is no size output and no confirmation.

When using Synaptic, I can see the total size that new packages that will use after installation but no way to see the size that needs to be downloaded, except to go from package to package and use properties to see the compressed size.

I would like to know if there is a way to see the size of a package(s) in terminal and Synaptic prior to downloading and installing it/them?

Answer 1

In the terminal, for a single package:

apt-cache --no-all-versions show $package | grep '^Size: '

for more than a package:

apt-cache --no-all-versions show $packages | 
    awk '$1 == "Package:" { p = $2 }
         $1 == "Size:"    { printf("%10d %s\n", $2, p) }'

I have no idea about Synaptic.

Answer 2

The latest and best way to do this is with apt show, which includes units:

apt show firefox | grep Size

Installed-Size: 202 MB
Download-Size: 51.7 MB

apt show can be used to see lots of other useful information about a package before you install it, including version, dependencies, "Breaks", "Replaces", and a description.

Answer 3

apt-cache show <package> or aptitude show <package> will show more information about a package, including its size.

For the package size only, you can use:

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

or

aptitude show <package> | grep 'Uncompressed Size'

For .deb packages you can use:

dpkg-deb -I <package>.deb | grep Installed-Size

Answer 4

This is also right but size is displayed in bytes. And this shows size in better format but if package is of very small size (say < 1MB) then in-spite of echo 'n'it will install package (Because in that case, apt doesn't prompt).

So, You use --no-download with --assume-no as follows:

sudo apt-get --no-download --assume-no install <package_name> | grep 'Need to get'

Here --no-download argues not to download package and --assume-no is for assuming no (n) in case of any prompt.

Example:

$ sudo apt-get --no-download --assume-no install ttf-devanagari-fonts 2>/dev/null | grep 'Need to get'
Need to get 938 kB of archives.

Answer 5

You could use the "dry run" mode, which just pretends to download and install packages

$ aptitude install -sy xlockmore
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  xlockmore 
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 27 not upgraded.
Need to get 194 kB of archives. After unpacking 373 kB will be used.
Would download/install/remove packages.

Answer 6

You could try the below command to see the size of archieves that are needed to be downloaded for a particular package.

echo 'n' | sudo apt-get install package | awk '/^Need to get/ {print $4,$5}'

@enzotib answer is good but it show the size of the archives that are needed to be downloaded in some other format not in mb's. But this command will show the size in Mb's.

Example:

$ apt-cache --no-all-versions show chromium-browser | grep '^Size: '
Size: 41493718

$ echo 'n' | sudo apt-get install chromium-browser | awk '/^Need to get/ {print $4,$5}'
44.4 MB

Answer 7

Trying to get the total installed size including dependencies for a given package on Ubuntu 20.10:

# export package=fonts-deva
# apt-get --dry-run --assume-no --no-install-recommends install "$package" |
  grep Inst | awk '{print $2}' |
  xargs -i apt-cache show --no-all-versions {} | grep "Installed-Size" |
  awk '{s+=$2} END {print s " kB"}'
4447 kB

This goes through a dry-run installation to see which packages would get installed and sums up their Installed-Size.

Why such a complex approach?
There are issues with existing answers:

• Size of dependencies may not be included
• Parsing apt-get output for the message After this operation, 4554 kB of additional disk space will be used. won't work for small packages that get installed without the [Y/n] query.
• Using apt-get --no-download --assume-no install fonts-deva doesn't work for me:
  E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?