Script to compile list of packages installed after initial Distro install

ericmarceau · May 3, 2026, 2:59am

Looking for feedback and contributions, to what would be a shared tool, to generate the list of packages, installed by the User, after the basic Distro installation.

Intent is to be able to either

duplicate the same package set on another host (or a host rebuilt from scratch), or
present that set of packages as a checklist table for choosing to install only a subset of the packages currently installed (a future YAD-based project), again on another host or a host rebuilt from scratch.

Current state of the script is to

identify the manually installed files,
sort the packages by age as determined by the corresponding *.list file
identify packages not having an *.list file and determine if those have dependent packages, with a view of determining whether they are worthwhile retaining as part of the replication/rebuild set

Are there any recommendations regarding a better approach to tackling the above problem?

Session log (so far):

# ./PKGS__Report_PostInstall.sh

 List of Manually Installed Packages [659]:

	-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8801 May  2 22:18 PKGS__Report_PostInstall.manual.txt

 The following contains the list of packages [593] sorted by oldest installation:

	-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 29202 May  2 22:18 PKGS__Report_PostInstall.stat.txt

 The following packages did not have a corresponding '*.list' file to determine installation date:

	-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4600 May  2 22:18 PKGS__Report_PostInstall.nolist.txt

	 Evaluating  zlib1g-dev ...                     DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tk-table ...                       DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tk-html1 ...                       DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tk-dev ...                         DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tkblt-dev ...                      DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tkblt ...                          DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tk8.6-dev ...                      DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tcl-memchan-dev ...                DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tcl-memchan ...                    DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tcllib-critcl ...                  DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tcl-dev ...                        DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  tcl8.6-dev ...                     DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  qtbase5-dev ...                    DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  qml-module-qtwebkit ...            DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  openjdk-17-jdk ...                 DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  openjdk-11-jdk ...                 DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  mesa-common-dev ...                DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libxrdapputils2 ...                DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libxrandr-dev ...                  DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libxinerama-dev ...                DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libxine2-ffmpeg ...                DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libxi-dev ...                      DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libxcursor-dev ...                 DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libwebp-dev ...                    DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libwebkitgtk-6.0-4 ...             DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libupower-glib-dev ...             DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libssl-dev ...                     DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libssl3 ...                        DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libsqlite3-dev ...                 DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libqt5webkit5-dev ...              DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libqt5opengl5-dev ...              DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libpoppler-dev ...                 DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libpng-dev ...                     DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libosmesa6 ...                     DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libopencsg1-dbg ...                DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libmpg123-dev ...                  DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libjpeg62 ...                      DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libhwloc-contrib-plugins ...       DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libgtkmm-3.0-dev ...               DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libgtk-4-dev ...                   DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libgtk2.0-dev ...                  DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libglu1-mesa-dev ...               DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libglibmm-2.4-dev ...              DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libglfw3-dev ...                   DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libglew-dev ...                    DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libglade2-0 ...                    DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libgl1-mesa-dev ...                DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libfontconfig1-dev ...             DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libfftw3-dev ...                   DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libexpat1-dev ...                  DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libegl1-mesa ...                   DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libdvdcss-dev ...                  DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libdvdcss2 ...                     DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libcairo-script-interpreter2 ...   DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libcairo2-dev ...                  DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libboost-dev ...                   DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libbluray-dev ...                  DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libbdplus-dev ...                  DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libavcodec-extra ...               DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libavcodec-dev ...                 DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  libao-dev ...                      DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  gtk3-engines-unico ...             DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad ...       DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  gir1.2-evince-3.0 ...              DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  freeglut3-dev ...                  DEPENDANTS
	 Evaluating  caja-extension-fma ...             DEPENDANTS

#

Coud some of these that have ‘DEPENDANTS’ be superfluous, given that the is no corresponding *.list file?

Script: PKGS__Report_PostInstall.sh

#!/bin/bash

dbg=0

###
###	Script Intended To Identify All Post-Distro User-Installed Packages
###
###	NOTICE - Work-in-progress - Looking for feedback, additions, enhancements
###


progress=0

now=$( date '+%Y%m%d_%H%M%S' )

work=$( basename "${0}" ".sh" ).work.tmp	; rm -f "${work}"

marked=$( basename "${0}" ".sh" ).manual.txt	; rm -f "${marked}"
fTemps=$( basename "${0}" ".sh" ).temp.txt	; rm -f "${fTemps}"
fDates=$( basename "${0}" ".sh" ).stat.txt	; rm -f "${fDates}"
fPackg=$( basename "${0}" ".sh" ).packgs.txt	; rm -f "${fPackg}"
fMssng=$( basename "${0}" ".sh" ).nolist.txt	; rm -f "${fMssng}"
report=$( basename "${0}" ".sh" ).${now}.txt	; rm -f "${report}"


###
###	Get Manually Installed Packages
###

comm -23 <(apt-mark showmanual | sort) <(gzip -dc /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz | sed -n 's/^Package: //p' | sort) >"${marked}"

numMrk=$( wc -l "${marked}" | awk '{ print $1 }' )

echo -e "\n List of Manually Installed Packages [${numMrk}]:\n"
ls -l "${marked}" | awk '{ printf("\t%s\n", $0 ) ; }'



###
###	Determine Installation Date of Packages
###

#                               filename perms user group size mods status filetype
#result=`/usr/bin/stat --format "%n|%A|%U|%G|%s|%Y|%Z|%F" "${fNam}" `
tac "${marked}" |
while read line
do
	testor=$( grep "Package: ${line}"'$' /var/lib/dpkg/status )
	if [ -n "${testor}" ]
	then
		list="/var/lib/dpkg/info/${line}.list"
		if [ -s "${list}" ]
		then
			/usr/bin/stat --format "%Y|%n|" "${list}"
			echo "${testor}" >>"${fPackg}"
		else
			echo "${testor}|MISSING|${list}" >>"${fPackg}"
		fi
	fi
done | {
	if [ ${progress} -eq 1 ]
	then
		awk 'BEGIN{
			cnt=49 ;
			printf("%49s", "" ) | "cat 1>&2" ;
		}{
			print $0 ;
			cnt++ ;
			if( cnt == 50 ){
				printf(" | %s\n", $0 ) | "cat 1>&2" ;
				cnt=0 ;
			}else{
				printf(".") | "cat 1>&2" ;
			} ;
		}END{
			if( cnt != 0 ){
				fmt=sprintf("%s%s%s%s", "%", 49-cnt, "s", " | %s\n" ) ;
				printf( fmt, "", $0 ) | "cat 1>&2" ;
			} ;
		}'
	else
		cat
	fi
}>"${fTemps}"



###
###	Sort Packages by Oldest First
###

sort -t "|" --key=1.1,2.0 "${fTemps}" > "${fDates}"

numAge=$( wc -l "${fDates}" | awk '{ print $1 }' )

echo -e "\n The following contains the list of packages [${numAge}] sorted by oldest installation:\n"
ls -l "${fDates}" | awk '{ printf("\t%s\n", $0 ) ; }'
#echo ""
#head "${fDates}"

if [ ${numAge} -ne ${numMrk} ]
then
	echo -e "\n The following packages did not have a corresponding '*.list' file to determine installation date:\n"
	grep '|MISSING|' "${fPackg}" >"${fMssng}"		 #| awk '{ printf("\t | %s\n", $0 ) ; }'
	ls -l "${fMssng}" | awk '{ printf("\t%s\n", $0 ) ; }'
fi



###
###	Identify Dependants for Packages Having No List
###
###	No Dependants Suggests Packages Are Optional and Retention Should Be Confirmed
###	Before Including in List For Host Installation Replication
###

boldON="\033[1m"
boldOFF="\033[0m"

greenON="\033[92;1m"
greenOFF="\033[0m"

yellowON="\033[93;1m"
yellowOFF="\033[0m"

redON="\033[91;1m"
redOFF="\033[0m"

orangeON="\033[33;1m"
orangeOFF="\033[0m"

pNameWidth=$( cut -f1 -d\| "${fMssng}" | cut -f2 -d\: | sed 's+^\ ++' | while read line ; do echo "${line}" | wc -c ; done | sort -nr | head -1 | awk '{ print $1 }' )
test ${dbg} -eq 1 && echo $pNameWidth

pWidth=$( expr ${pNameWidth} + 18 )
test ${dbg} -eq 1 && echo $pWidth

fmtStr="\t %-${pWidth}s"
test ${dbg} -eq 1 && echo "'${fmtStr}'"

echo " Evaluating 'no list file' packages ..."
for package in $( cut -f1 -d\| "${fMssng}" | cut -f2 -d\: | sed 's+^\ ++' )
do
	printf "${fmtStr}" "Evaluating  ${package} ... "

	rm -f "${work}"
	apt-rdepends -r --state-follow=Installed --state-show=Installed "${package}" >"${work}" 2>>/dev/null
	if [ -s "${work}" ]
	then
		echo -e "${boldON}${greenON}DEPENDANTS${greenOFF}"
	else
		echo -e "${boldON}${redON}NO_DEPENDANTS${redOFF}"
	fi
done




echo "\n\n

 FUTURES:
	* interractive logic to selectively purge packages identified as 'no list' if also 'NO_DEPENDANTS'
	* consolidate list of package names for host 'installation replication'
\n"

exit 0

tkn · May 3, 2026, 11:28am

I like that

I can only add what I usually do to create a post-install list
maybe you find one or two things in it that you consider usable enough to use in one way or another:

Directly after installing my APT based distro, I do this:

apt-mark showmanual > initially_installed

This gives me a list of initially installed pkgs without their dependencies (dependencies will be installed anyway).

Then, when I have my install exectly as I want it to be, i do this:

apt-mark showmanual | grep -vf initially_installed >my_list

This gives me the list of everything I installed afterwards.
I only have to do this procedure just once.

Now every time I install an APT based distro, I only have to run

sudo apt-get -y -m install $(cat my_list)

to get my personal package choices installed

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Script to compile list of packages installed after initial Distro install

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