Download Recursive Dependencies Of A Package In Ubuntu

We already knew how to download a package along with all of its dependencies in Ubuntu and its derivatives. Today, we will see how to download recursive dependencies of a package in Ubuntu. In other words, we are going to download the dependencies of dependencies.

Introduction

Let us say you are trying to install a package named a.deb. The a.deb package depends on package b.deb and again package b.deb depends on package c.deb. In this method, we not only download the dependencies of a.deb, but also the dependencies of b.deb and c.deb.

This could be useful when you can't install the package even after you downloaded all of the required dependencies using apt-rdepends command.

Downloading packages with dependencies locally serves three main purposes.

1. Avoid the repetitive download of the same set of packages over and over. For example, if you want to install Vim editor on multiple systems, you can download Vim with all required dependencies, save them in a USB drive (or transfer them via LAN) and install Vim on other system.
2. Save the Internet bandwidth and time.
3. Install Packages on non-internet connected systems. This is the main reason for downloading packages with dependencies locally. You can download the packages in an Internet-connected system and then transfer them to the offline system via USB drive or LAN and install them in it without Internet.

The reasons could be vary for you. If you ever wanted to install packages on an offline system, this method would definitely help.

Download recursive dependencies of a package in Ubuntu

For the purpose of this guide, we will take Vim program as an example.

First, let us list recursive dependencies of the Vim package using the following command:

$ apt-cache depends --recurse --no-recommends --no-suggests --no-conflicts --no-breaks --no-replaces --no-enhances vim | grep "^\w" | sort -u

Replace vim with your own package. If you want to display the output in column format for easy reading, run:

$ apt-cache depends --recurse --no-recommends --no-suggests --no-conflicts --no-breaks --no-replaces --no-enhances vim | grep "^\w" | sort -u | column

Sample output:

cdebconf       libacl1         libdb5.3        liblzma5:i386       libpython3.6-stdlib libtinfo5       vim
debconf         libacl1:i386        libdebian-installer4    libmpdec2       libreadline7        libzstd1        vim-common
dpkg            libattr1        libexpat1       libncursesw5        libselinux1     libzstd1:i386       vim-runtime
dpkg:i386       libattr1:i386       libffi6         libnewt0.52     libselinux1:i386    mime-support        xxd
gcc-8-base      libbz2-1.0      libgcc1         libpcre3        libslang2       perl-base       xxd:i386
gcc-8-base:i386     libbz2-1.0:i386     libgcc1:i386        libpcre3:i386       libsqlite3-0        readline-common     zlib1g
install-info        libc6           libgpm2         libpython3.6        libssl1.1       tar         zlib1g:i386
install-info:i386   libc6:i386      liblzma5        libpython3.6-minimal    libtextwrap1        tar:i386

These are the dependencies of dependencies of Vim program. Please note that all of these may not required to install Vim.

Let us go ahead and download recursive dependencies of the Vim package with command:

$ apt-get download $(apt-cache depends --recurse --no-recommends --no-suggests --no-conflicts --no-breaks --no-replaces --no-enhances vim | grep "^\w" | sort -u)

This command will download vim along with its dependency programs in the current directory. It will also download the dependencies of the Vim's dependencies.

Check all of the dependencies have been downloaded using "ls" command:

$ ls

Here is the list of Vim program's dependencies and the dependencies of its dependencies in my Ubuntu 18.04 desktop:

Now move all of the downloaded files via a USB drive or LAN to the offline system. And then go to the location where you saved all downloaded packages in your offline system and install them using command:

$ sudo dpkg -i *

Alternatively, you can build the index of all downloaded packages and install them using APT package manager.

To build index of the downloaded packages, go to the location where the packages are stored and run the following command:

$ dpkg-scanpackages . | gzip -c9 > Packages.gz

Add this folder to APT source list using the following command:

$ echo "deb[trusted=yes] file:///home/sk/vim ./" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

Here, I have saved all the files in /home/sk/vim folder in my offline system. You need to replace this path with your own.

Update the package index using command:

$ sudo apt-get update

Finally, install the vim package using APT package manager:

$ sudo apt-get install vim

Similarly, you can download and install other packages as well.