Re: finding apt dependencies

On 08/07/2026 3:05 am, Eben King wrote:
> On 7/7/26 15:21, Robert Heller wrote:
>> At Tue, 7 Jul 2026 14:18:25 -0400 Eben King wrote:
>>
>>> I have a need to find the upgradable package with the most dependencies.
>> Why do you need to do this?  And why does speed matter?
> 
> Generally, I dislike it when lots of things change at the same time, so 
> rather than going through my upgradable packages periodically and 
> updating the lot of them, I run a cron job that, once a day, upgrades a 
> package chosen at random from the list of upgradable packages.

 From my point of view, you are seeking for subtle bugs due to partial 
upgrades. Perhaps apt-listchanges might help you to manage updates 
(notice that changelog entries are not enabled by default). Security 
updates have been mentioned in this thread already.

I recall a similar request a half of the year ago. For those who want to 
try to shoot their feet, I expect, APT Python API should allow to query 
upgradable packages and to walk through their dependency graph.

>>>   dependencies=$(apt-get --simulate upgrade "$package" | grep upgraded, | cut -f 1 -d ' ')

Have you tried to run 'apt-get upgrade "$package"' to verify that it 
acts accordingly to your expectations?