Debian apt¶

ID: apt
Home page: https://wiki.debian.org/AptCLI
Version requirement: >= 1
Platforms: 🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · ⨂ Unix
Operations: installed · outdated · orphans · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup · doctor
purl types: pkg:apt · pkg:deb
CLI name: apt
Every call: apt --quiet <command>
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: dpkg-based
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/apt.py

Base class for Debian’s apt front-end and its variants.

Documentation: apt(8) man page.

Command equivalences with other managers are listed in Pacman/Rosetta.

mpm drives the high-level apt binary, not apt-get or apt-cache, over system-wide packages. Mutations escalate through sudo and force --yes to stay non-interactive. APT_Mint retargets Linux Mint’s same-named but differently-behaved apt.

Note

apt’s listing and search commands emit Listing..., Sorting... and Full Text Search... preambles plus progress indicators. --quiet drops the progress bars, and each parser anchors on the name/suite version arch row shape, so the preamble lines fall through.

Note

search matches names only by default. An exact query is wrapped as the ^query$ regex apt supports natively; an extended query switches to --full to pull descriptions into the output for mpm to post-filter.

What `mpm` adds to `apt`¶

mpm reaches across every manager at once, not apt alone: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover apt alongside apt-mint and any other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as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

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

To…	With `apt`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`apt list --installed`	`mpm --apt installed`
List outdated packages	`apt list --upgradable`	`mpm --apt outdated`
Search for a package	`apt search abc --names-only`	`mpm --apt search abc`
Install a package	`sudo apt --yes install git`	`mpm install pkg:apt/git`
Upgrade one package	`sudo apt --yes install --only-upgrade git`	`mpm --apt upgrade <pkg>`
Upgrade everything	`sudo apt --yes upgrade`	`mpm --apt upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`sudo apt --yes remove git`	`mpm remove pkg:apt/git`
List orphaned dependencies	`apt autoremove --simulate`	`mpm --apt orphans`
Clear caches	`sudo apt --yes clean`	`mpm --apt cleanup --cache`
Run health checks	`apt-get check`	`mpm --apt doctor`

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`	✓	`--orphans` also drops the package’s orphaned dependencies
`sync`	✓
`cleanup`	✓	`--orphans` runs the system-wide orphan sweep
`doctor`	✓

Selecting and configuring `apt`¶

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

[mpm]
apt = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every apt 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.apt]
timeout = 900

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

Recipes¶

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

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --apt dump apt.toml, then mpm restore apt.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --apt sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).
Gate CI on health: mpm --apt doctor relays Debian apt’s own diagnosis and exits non-zero on trouble.

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.

Cooldown¶

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

Status: ➖ N/A (Debian’s unstable → testing → stable migration is functionally similar)
Reference: Nesbitt, Package managers need to cool down

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); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Version probe¶

The version is probed by running:

$ apt --version
apt 2.0.6 (amd64)

and extracted with:

r"apt\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 Debian apt well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ apt --quiet list --installed
Listing...
adduser/xenial,now 3.113+nmu3ubuntu4 all [installed]
bc/xenial,now 1.06.95-9build1 amd64 [installed]
bsdmainutils/xenial,now 9.0.6ubuntu3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
ca-certificates/xenial,now 20160104ubuntu1 all [installed]
cron/xenial,now 3.0pl1-128ubuntu2 amd64 [installed]
debconf/xenial,now 1.5.58ubuntu1 all [installed]
debianutils/xenial,now 4.7 amd64 [installed]
diffutils/xenial,now 1:3.3-3 amd64 [installed]
e2fsprogs/xenial,now 1.42.13-1ubuntu1 amd64 [installed]
ethstatus/xenial,now 0.4.3ubuntu2 amd64 [installed]
file/xenial,now 1:5.25-2ubuntu1 amd64 [installed]
findutils/xenial,now 4.6.0+git+20160126-2 amd64 [installed]
libidn2-0/jammy,now 2.3.2-2build1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libidn2-0/jammy,now 2.3.2-2build1 i386 [installed,automatic]

$ apt --quiet list --upgradable
Listing...
apt/xenial-updates 1.2.19 amd64 [upgradable from: 1.2.15ubuntu0.2]
nano/xenial-updates 2.5.3-2ubuntu2 amd64 [upgradable from: 2.5.3-2]

$ apt --quiet autoremove --simulate
NOTE: This is only a simulation!
      apt needs root privileges for real execution.
      Keep also in mind that locking is deactivated,
      so don't depend on the relevance to the real current situation!
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libx11-dev libxcb1-dev
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Remv libx11-dev [2:1.8.7-1]
Remv libxcb1-dev [1.15-1]

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 --apt installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog¶

7.4.0 (2026-07-25)
- Plain cleanup no longer removes orphaned packages: their native sweeps moved behind cleanup --orphans. This also stops emerge’s cleanup from triggering its pre-depclean world upgrade unless --orphans is given.
6.4.0 (2026-04-27)
- Add remove operation. Closes #1775.
5.18.0 (2024-08-02)
- Add architecture in package metadata.
5.13.1 (2023-05-06)
- Fix omission of the final result in an apt (non-mint) search.
5.13.0 (2023-04-04)
- Fix parsing of search results for apt and apt-mint. Closes #881 and #966.
5.0.1 (2022-04-28)
- Fix commands incompatible with --yes option. Closes #625.
4.13.1 (2022-04-17)
- Add missing sudo pre-commands for apt calls that requires it. Closes #496 and #579.
4.4.0 (2021-09-27)
- Add dedicated apt-mint manager to handle the special case of apt on Linux Mint.
3.0.0 (2020-03-25)
- Fallback on apt version apt when looking for version. Closes #57 and #52.
2.6.0 (2017-09-10)
- Add support for apt on Linux systems.