You probably know the mutt feature called "tagging":
 - press capital "T",
 - enter a search expression,
 - use semicolon-foo, where foo is almost any command.

That causes the command to be performed on all messages which matched
the search expression.

I would LOVE to see that in aptitude.

I was just about to file this issue again, when I had the hunch to
search for "mutt" — and yes, someone before me has had this idea!

Especially on slow machines, it's a real pain to have to wait after
every action before I can navigate to the next package and apply the
next action.

Either tagging, or queuing of actions and multi-threaded navigation
while actions are being computed would be great.

Hello, submitters from the distant and not-so-distant past,

2003-08-08 19:42 Marcin Owsiany:

... and ...

2013-08-25 18:09 martin f krafft:


Replying from mutt, I can see what you mean and the usefulness of the
feature, and I just used it to reply to both.

Even if not exactly the same, I think that there are several ways to
accomplish what you want (specially the original request), with search
patterns [1] [2].  This works from the command line and from the curses
interface, e.g. limiting the view with 'l'.

  [1] http://aptitude.alioth.debian.org/doc/en/ch02s04.html

  [2] http://aptitude.alioth.debian.org/doc/en/ch02s04s05.html


For example, if one wants to purge all packages that were just removed
but still have config and data files around, one can:

  # aptitude purge ~c

To reinstall some sets of packages (multiarch system here, with amd64
and i386):

  # aptitude search '~n ^base-.*'
  i A base-files                   - Debian base system miscellaneous files
  p   base-files:i386              - Debian base system miscellaneous files
  i   base-passwd                  - Debian base system master password and group files
  p   base-passwd:i386             - Debian base system master password and group files

  # aptitude search '~n ^base-files ~ramd64'
  i A base-files                   - Debian base system miscellaneous files

  # aptitude reinstall '~n ^base-files ~ramd64'
  The following packages will be REINSTALLED:
    base-files
  0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 468 not upgraded.
  Need to get 0 B/78.5 kB of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
  (Reading database ... 187579 files and directories currently installed.)
  Preparing to unpack .../base-files_9.4_amd64.deb ...
  Unpacking base-files (9.4) over (9.4) ...
  Processing triggers for install-info (6.0.0.dfsg.1-3) ...
  Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.2-1) ...
  Processing triggers for cracklib-runtime (2.9.2-1) ...
  Setting up base-files (9.4) ...


In the graphical interface, the patterns work in the same way if one
uses them with 'l' (again, like in mutt) -- it filters the list of
packages in the view, and only shows the packages matching the pattern.
It still groups the package list according to different criteria, but
users can change this, and use a "flat" view (Menu Views->New Flat
Package List) to not nest in Upgradable/libdevel/main (example below),
or one can change temporarily the grouping of the current view ('G' and
clearing the text, then OK; or selecting another prefered grouping;
saving it as default, whatever).

As an example, one can 'l'imit on '~s libdevel ~i ~U' (for "packages
matching section libdevel AND already installed AND new version
available a.k.a. upgradeable"), only this tree below will show:

What Manuel described is a strict subset of what I asked for. To be honest
I don't remember why I asked for that in the first place, as these days I
tend to mess around with package lists much less than I did twelve years
ago.

also sprach Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo@gmail.com> [2015-09-05 13:57 +0200]:

It's not for my use-case, but thanks for the nice walkthrough.