How can I get a list with the packages selected by apt-get autoremove?

Question

Is there any command that prints only the name of the packages that apt-get autoremove selects? I'm creating a script that updates the kernel, removes the old kernel and the unnecessary packages (apt-get autoremove), but I want to print on the screen the list of packages that will be removed by apt-get autoremove, how can I do this?

You should just be able to get it to run sudo apt-get autoremove -y and it should autoremove anything needed to be removed... — , Jul 24 '15 at 20:33
To get the list of packages without removing them actually you can do sudo apt-get --dry-run autoremove — heemayl, Jul 24 '15 at 20:36
I just want to get the name of the packages, not the entire output of the command.... — Afonso Sousa, Jul 24 '15 at 20:53

score 34 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

34

Since as per your comment you want to list only the packages that are going to be removed:

apt-get --dry-run autoremove | grep -Po '^Remv \K[^ ]+'

grep command breakdown:

-P: Interprets the given pattern as a PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) pattern
-o: Prints only the matched string instead of the whole line

Regex breakdown:

^: matches the start of the line
Remv: matches a Remv string
\K: excludes the previously matched substring from the matched string
[^ ]+: matches one or more characters not

$ apt-get --dry-run autoremove | grep -Po 'Remv \K[^ ]+'
libapache2-mod-php5
php5-readline
php5-cli
libonig2
libqdbm14
php5-json
php5-common

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

Community

1

answered Jul 25 '15 at 08:59

kos

41,378

2

@GeekLynxAfonso, you don't need to use sudowith --dry-run option. – jarno Dec 23 '15 at 10:35
1

@jarno Makes sense, the fact that it was probably not needed didn't occur to me. Thanks – kos Dec 23 '15 at 10:41

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 27 '15 at 18:04

5

Actually you only need to filter the output of your

sudo apt-get autoremove --dry-run

command.

For instance you can do it with

sudo apt-get autoremove --dry-run  | head -n 5 | tail -n 1

edited Jul 27 '15 at 18:04

A.B.

92,275

answered Jul 24 '15 at 23:17

lemonslice

576

1

Your command works too!! But I prefer the kos's command... But thanks in same!! :) – Afonso Sousa Jul 25 '15 at 14:23

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 22 '22 at 17:55

3

No need for apt-get in modern apt versions. You can use

apt autoremove --dry-run

answered Oct 22 '22 at 17:55

Abdull

734

Thats necro-bumping. At the time of the question you had to use apt-get ;-) – kanehekili Oct 22 '22 at 21:23

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 01 '23 at 16:38

3

Using apt-patterns (see man 7 apt-patterns) one can simply do:

apt list '?garbage'

answered Sep 01 '23 at 16:38

ImproviseAdaptOvercome

91

Nice pattern I didn't know ;-) To fit better the question the answer should be apt list '?garbage' 2>/dev/null | grep -oP '^(.*)(?=/)' – NetVicious Aug 14 '24 at 11:06

How can I get a list with the packages selected by apt-get autoremove?

4 Answers4