aptitude¶

ID: aptitude
Home page: https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/aptitude
Version requirement: >= 0.4.11.4
Platforms: 🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · ⨂ Unix
Operations: installed · outdated · orphans · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup
purl types: pkg:aptitude · pkg:deb
CLI name: aptitude
Every call: aptitude --quiet --disable-columns <command>
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: dpkg-based
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/aptitude.py

Front-end to Debian’s apt, with a resolver and a query language of its own.

Aptitude reaches the same archives apt does, over the same dpkg backend, and is wrapped on the same grounds as Nala: a distinct tool with a vocabulary of its own, rather than a translation layer over another CLI. It shares dpkg’s lock with the rest of that family, so mpm runs it serially against them.

Note

Every listing is a search over aptitude’s own pattern language (~i for installed, ~U for upgradable, ~i~g for installed garbage) rendered through an explicit --display-format. That projection is what makes the output a flat package,version table instead of the padded columns the interactive interface draws.

Caution

A query reaches aptitude as a regular expression, not as a literal substring, so it is escaped by escape_pattern() before being spliced into a ~n or ~d term. Skipping that step is not a near-miss but a silent empty result: ~n^libsigc++-2.0-0v5$ compiles to a regex matching no package at all.

Note

--disable-columns is redundant on a pipe, aptitude having disabled columns on a redirection since 0.7.5, and is passed anyway: that heuristic is a moving target (a later release narrowed it again for a caller setting a width explicitly), and the flag is what the manual’s own example uses to ask for unformatted output.

Documentation: aptitude(8) man page.

What `mpm` adds to `aptitude`¶

mpm reaches across every manager at once, not aptitude alone: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover aptitude alongside apt, apt-mint and any other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your `aptitude` commands, in `mpm`¶

You already know aptitude: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With `aptitude`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`aptitude search ~i --display-format %p,%v`	`mpm --aptitude installed`
List outdated packages	`aptitude search ~U --display-format %p,%v,%V`	`mpm --aptitude outdated`
Search for a package	`aptitude search ~nabc --display-format %p,%V,%d`	`mpm --aptitude search %p,%V,%d`
Install a package	`sudo aptitude --assume-yes install nyancat`	`mpm install pkg:aptitude/nyancat`
Upgrade one package	`sudo aptitude --assume-yes install eject`	`mpm --aptitude upgrade eject`
Upgrade everything	`sudo aptitude --assume-yes safe-upgrade`	`mpm --aptitude upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`sudo aptitude --assume-yes remove nyancat`	`mpm remove pkg:aptitude/nyancat`
List orphaned dependencies	`aptitude search ~i~g --display-format %p,%v`	`mpm --aptitude orphans`
Clear caches	`sudo aptitude --assume-yes clean`	`mpm --aptitude cleanup --cache`

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations¶

Operation	Supported	Notes
`installed`	✓
`outdated`	✓
`orphans`	✓
`search`	✓
`install`	✓
`upgrade`	✓
`upgrade_all`	✓
`remove`	✓
`sync`	✓
`cleanup`	✓	`--orphans` runs the system-wide orphan sweep
`doctor`

Selecting and configuring `aptitude`¶

Deselect aptitude for a single run with --no-aptitude, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
aptitude = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every aptitude call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.managers.aptitude]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template aptitude prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes¶

A few jobs you would otherwise script around aptitude, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --aptitude dump aptitude.toml, then mpm restore aptitude.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --aptitude sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation¶

System-wide manager: mpm wraps its privileged operations in sudo out of the box. Instead of letting the tool prompt mid-run, mpm primes the credential cache up-front, with a single branded password prompt at most. Turn escalation off for rootless setups with --no-sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Concurrency¶

mpm never runs aptitude at the same time as apt, apt-mint, deb-get, nala or pacstall: they all install through dpkg and serialize on its /var/lib/dpkg/lock. Each mutating operation waits for the previous one, even with a higher --jobs, while managers outside this group keep running in parallel.

Only mutations are held back. The read-only queries (installed, outdated, search) take no backend lock and stay fully concurrent.

Cooldown¶

State of aptitude’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ➖ N/A (same Debian archives as apt)

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

Registry: Distro binary archives (pkg:deb, pkg:rpm, pkg:alpm, pkg:apk)
Retraction: Index revert: removal is an archive operation and the mirror is rebuilt without the package. Debian, for one, requires filing an RM: bug against ftp.debian.org (developers-reference)
Publish date: ❌ the version string is the distro maintainer’s build, carrying no upstream publication date

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Version probe¶

The version is probed by running:

$ aptitude --version
aptitude 0.8.13
Compiler: g++ 14.2.0
Compiled against:
  apt version 7.0.0
  NCurses version 6.5
  libsigc++ version: 2.12.1
  Gtk+ support disabled.
  Qt support disabled.

Current library versions:
  NCurses version: ncurses 6.5.20250216
  cwidget version: 0.5.18
  Apt version: 7.0.0

and extracted with:

r"aptitude\s+(?P<version>\S+)"

Reference traces¶

Raw native outputs captured in the manager source: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know aptitude well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ aptitude --quiet --disable-columns search ~i --display-format %p,%v
adduser,3.152
apparmor,4.1.0-1
apt,3.0.3
apt-utils,3.0.3
aptitude,0.8.13-7
aptitude-common,0.8.13-7
base-files,13.8+deb13u6
base-passwd,3.6.7
bash,5.2.37-2+b9
bash-completion,1:2.16.0-7
bsdutils,1:2.41-5
busybox,1:1.37.0-6+b8
bzip2,1.0.8-6
ca-certificates,20250419

$ aptitude --quiet --disable-columns search ~U --display-format %p,%v,%V
bsdutils,1:2.41-5,1:2.41.5-0+deb13u1
eject,2.41-5,2.41.5-0+deb13u1
fdisk,2.41-5,2.41.5-0+deb13u1
libblkid1,2.41-5,2.41.5-0+deb13u1
libexpat1,2.7.1-2,2.8.3-1~deb13u1
libfdisk1,2.41-5,2.41.5-0+deb13u1
liblastlog2-2,2.41-5,2.41.5-0+deb13u1
libmount1,2.41-5,2.41.5-0+deb13u1
libpython3.13-minimal,3.13.5-2+deb13u3,3.13.5-2+deb13u4
libpython3.13-stdlib,3.13.5-2+deb13u3,3.13.5-2+deb13u4

$ aptitude --quiet --disable-columns search ~i~g --display-format %p,%v
nyancat,1.5.2-0.3+b1

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --aptitude installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog¶

8.0.0.dev0 (unreleased)
- Add aptitude package manager, with inventory, outdated, search, orphans, install, remove, upgrade, sync and cache cleanup.