list-manual-packages

A small Python 3 script that lists packages manually installed by the user on Debian. This script parses the underlying APT metadata file at /var/lib/apt/extended_states. Project Repo Available at: https://github.com/WarrenU/list-manual-packages

What it Does

Debian marks packages as "automatically installed" when pulled in as dependencies. This script filters those out and returns only the explicitly installed packages.

It behaves similarly to Gentoo's selected set.

How to Install

To build and install the package:

dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b
sudo dpkg -i ../list-manual-packages_1.0_all.deb

How to Run

Once installed, run the script with:

list_manual_packages.py

Or directly via Python:

python3 /usr/bin/list_manual_packages.py

The script will output a list of explicitly installed packages, one per line.

Tested On

Debian 12 (Bookworm)

Notes

Make sure you have python3 installed (should be default on Debian 12).

You can redirect the output to a file if needed: list_manual_packages.py > manual-packages.txt

Running Unit Tests (Not included in debian package):

To run tests with verbose output:

python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v
Expected output will look like:

test_manual_packages (test_list_manual_packages.TestListManualPackages.test_manual_packages) ... ok
test_manual_packages_with_versions (test_list_manual_packages.TestListManualPackages.test_manual_packages_with_versions) ... ok
test_parse_dpkg_status (test_list_manual_packages.TestListManualPackages.test_parse_dpkg_status) ... ok

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 3 tests in 0.002s
OK