Dependency Analysis

Sometimes you might notice a certain package that you don't recognize nonetheless being updated, and you'd like to know where it came from. Or perhaps you'd like to know what the affect of installing some package might be, in terms of dependency load. The output of -Qi and -Si includes dependency information, but only one layer deep in either direction. In these cases, aura deps is a useful command.

By default it writes a .png to the current directory, but with --open will output to /tmp and open the image in the default viewer instead. If the image isn't opening in the viewer you prefer, you can alter it in ~/.config/mimeapps.list. For instance:

[Default Applications]
image/png=swayimg.desktop

The available .desktop entries can be found in /usr/share/applications/.

Displaying Dependencies

> aura deps sbcl --open

Looks like sbcl is fairly self-contained. Many packages are not, and their output needs to be limited to render usefully. For instance...

> aura deps gcc --open

Ack! Let's try again, but with --limit this time:

> aura deps gcc --limit=3 --open

Display Reverse Dependencies

Wait a minute, what's this gcc thing anyway? Doesn't sound very important. I want it off my system! Let's see...

> aura deps gcc --reverse --open

...nevermind. Note that cyan nodes indicate AUR packages.