Basic Commands of APT-GET and APT-CACHE for Package Management


Apt-get is the command-line utility for dealing with applications and may be considered for the person’s “back-end” to other tools for making use of the APT library.Apt-cache performs a variety of operations on APT’s package.This article explains about -“Basic Commands of APT-GET and APT-CACHE for Package Management”.

Apt-get

To get the more options about apt-get, use the following command as shown below –

$ apt-get -h

The sample output contains the following options as shown below –

update - Retrieve new lists of packages
   upgrade - Perform an upgrade
   install - Install new packages (pkg is libc6 not libc6.deb)
   remove - Remove packages
   purge - Remove packages and config files
   autoremove - Remove automatically all unused packages
   dist-upgrade - Distribution upgrade, see apt-get(8)
   dselect-upgrade - Follow dselect selections
   build-dep - Configure build-dependencies for source packages
   clean - Erase downloaded archive files
   autoclean - Erase old downloaded archive files
   check - Verify that there are no broken dependencies
   source - Download source archives
   download - Download the binary package into the current directory
   changelog - Download and display the changelog for the given package

Installing package

To install the package with apt-get, use the following command as shown below –

$ sudo apt-get install <package name>

Ugrade the software packages

To upgrade the software packages, use the following command –

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Remove unused packages

To remove automatically all unused packages, use the following command –

$ sudo apt-get autoremove

Erase downloaded archive files

To erase downloaded archive files, use the following command –

$ sudo apt-get clean

Erase old downloaded archives

To erase old downloaded archive files, use the following command –

$ sudo apt-get autoclean

Verify broken Dependencies

To verify that there are no broken dependencies, use the following command –

$ sudo apt-get check

Apt-cache

To get the more options about apt-cache, use the following commands –

$ sudo apt-cache --help

The sample options of apt-cache as shown below –

showsrc - Show source records
   search - Search the package list for a regex pattern
   depends - Show raw dependency information for a package
   rdepends - Show reverse dependency information for a package
   show - Show a readable record for the package
   pkgnames - List the names of all packages in the system
   policy - Show policy settings

Get the dependencies of package

To get the dependencies of package or source records, use the following command –

$sudo apt-cache showsrc <packegename>

Package list of a regex pattern

To get the package list for a regex pattern, use the following command –

$sudo apt-cache search <packegename>

Raw dependency information

To show raw dependency information for a package, use the following command –

$ apt-cache depends <packegename>

Show reverse dependency information

To show reverse dependency information for a package, use the following command –

$ apt-cache rdepends <packegename>

Show a readable record

To show a readable record for the package, use the following command –

$ apt-cache show <packegename>

Show the names of all packages

To show the names of all packages in the system, use the following command –

$ apt-cache pkgnames

In the above article, we have learnt about – Learn Basic Commands of APT-GET and APT-CACHE for Package Management. In our next articles, we will come up with more Linux based tricks and tips. Keep reading.

Sharon Christine
Sharon Christine

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest

Updated on: 23-Jan-2020

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