To select a particular version of the package, append “=version” to the package name: for instance, “aptitude install apt=0.3.1”. Similarly, to select a package from a particular archive, append “/archive” to the package name: for instance, “aptitude install apt/experimental”.

Not every package listed on the command line has to be installed; you can tell aptitude to do something different with a package by appending an “override specifier” to the name of the package. For example, aptitude remove wesnoth+ will install wesnoth, not remove it. The following override specifiers are available:

<package>+

<package>+M

<package>-

<package>_

<package>=

<package>:

<package>&M

<package>&m

As a special case, “install” with no arguments will act on any stored/pending actions.

For instance, “aptitude remove '~ndeity'” will remove all packages whose name contains “deity”.

For more information on automatically installed packages, see the section “Managing Automatically Installed Packages” in the aptitude reference manual.

This command is useful for avoiding broken versions of packages without having to set and clear manual holds. If you decide you really want the forbidden version after all, the “install” command will remove the ban.

It is sometimes necessary to remove or install one package in order to upgrade another; this command is not able to upgrade packages in such situations. Use the full-upgrade command to upgrade as many packages as possible.

Unless you pass the -F option, the output of aptitude search will look something like this:

i   apt                             - Advanced front-end for dpkg              
pi  apt-build                       - frontend to apt to build, optimize and in
cp  apt-file                        - APT package searching utility -- command-
ihA raptor-utils                    - Raptor RDF Parser utilities

Each search result is listed on a separate line. The first character of each line indicates the current state of the package: the most common states are p, meaning that no trace of the package exists on the system, c, meaning that the package was deleted but its configuration files remain on the system, i, meaning that the package is installed, and v, meaning that the package is virtual. The second character indicates the stored action (if any; otherwise a blank space is displayed) to be performed on the package, with the most common actions being i, meaning that the package will be installed, d, meaning that the package will be deleted, and p, meaning that the package and its configuration files will be removed. If the third character is A, the package was automatically installed.

For a complete list of the possible state and action flags, see the section “Accessing Package Information” in the aptitude reference guide.

If the verbosity level is 1 or greater (i.e., at least one -v is present on the command-line), information about all versions of the package is displayed. Otherwise, information about the “candidate version” (the version that “aptitude install” would download) is displayed.

You can display information about a different version of the package by appending =version to the package name; you can display the version from a particular archive by appending /archive to the package name. If either of these is present, then only the version you request will be displayed, regardless of the verbosity level.

If the verbosity level is 1 or greater, the package's architecture, compressed size, filename, and md5sum fields will be displayed. If the verbosity level is 2 or greater, the select version or versions will be displayed once for each archive in which they are found.

By default, the changelog for the version which would be installed with “aptitude install” is downloaded. You can select a particular version of a package by appending =version to the package name; you can select the version from a particular archive by appending /archive to the package name.

By default, the version which would be installed with “aptitude install” is downloaded. You can select a particular version of a package by appending =version to the package name; you can select the version from a particular archive by appending /archive to the package name.

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Deps.

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Download-Only.

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Format.

This corresponds to the configuration item Aptitude::CmdLine::Fix-Broken.

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt.

This corresponds to the pair of configuration options Aptitude::Recommends-Important and Aptitude::Keep-Recommends.

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::Recommends-Important

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::Simulate.

For instance, aptitude --schedule-only install evolution will schedule the evolution package for later installation.

This corresponds to the configuration item APT::Default-Release.

The optional =n may be used to directly set the amount of quietness (for instance, to override a setting in /etc/apt/apt.conf); it causes the program to behave as if -q had been passed exactly <n> times.

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Versions.

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Verbose.

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Width

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Assume-Yes.

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Size-Changes.