How best to search for dependencies?

Question

mpv has a lot of dependencies and I don't know how to search for them. Is there a way to search for the packages that contain the dependencies?

mpv is available from the universe repository. apt depends mpv should give you the depends for mpv on your system. — DK Bose, May 07 '18 at 13:23
Why do you wish to search for dependencies? Apt takes care of everything for you...if you are using it properly. — user535733, May 07 '18 at 13:58
You have lots of options. See How to list dependent packages (reverse dependencies)? apt depends works, but you can install rdepends and then use apt-rdepends -r <packagename>, may give a more thorough list...There's also apt-cache showpkg <packagename>. Or ubuntu-dev-tools provides reverse-depends. — Hee Jin, May 07 '18 at 15:44
Possible duplicate of How to list dependent packages (reverse dependencies)? — Hee Jin, May 07 '18 at 15:44

xiota · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-13T04:59:47.450

The following commands show information about a package (mpv in this case), including dependencies.

The following command shows dependencies recursively (the depends of depends of...):

The following commands show reverse dependencies (packages for which this package is a dependency):

The following command shows both dependencies and reverse dependencies:

If you just want to install a package and have the package manager handle dependencies, use:

`aptitude install mpv`

aptitude automatically resolves conflicting dependencies during installation, whereas apt/apt-get do not.

1 Answers1