In 'apt-cache depends' output, what is the meaning of Suggests, Recommends, |, <>?

Posted by fred.bear on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by fred.bear
Published on 2011-02-09T00:35:47Z Indexed on 2011/02/09 7:33 UTC
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I've checked the man/info page, but there is no reference to some aspects of the output fomat of apt-cache depends

The man/info page tried to be helpful (in an obtuse manner); quote: "For the specific meaning of the remainder of the output it is best to consult the apt source code"

Now in fairness to the info page, that quote was in regards to the 'showpkg' option which it had reasonably explained, but my option had no such explanation... I understand that Linux info comes from many sources (not just man/info pages), and I don't particularly want to rummage through the source (altough somtimes I do), so here is an example of what I'd like to know the meaning of.

# I can assume what these mean, but... 
#  What does | mean? (probably means 'or'???)
#  What does <pkg> and the following indentations  mean? 
#  At the end, the interaction(?) of Suggest and Recommends puzzles me.

$ apt-cache depends solr-common
solr-common    
  Depends: debconf
 |Depends: openjdk-6-jre-headless
 |Depends: <java5-runtime-headless>
    default-jre-headless
    gcj-4.4-jre-headless
    gcj-jre-headless
    gij-4.3
   openjdk-6-jre-headless
  Depends: <java6-runtime-headless>
    default-jre-headless
    openjdk-6-jre-headless
  Depends: libcommons-codec-java
  Depends: libcommons-csv-java
  Depends: libcommons-fileupload-java
  Depends: libcommons-httpclient-java
  Depends: libcommons-io-java
  Depends: libjaxp1.3-java
  Depends: libjetty-java
  Depends: liblucene2-java
  Depends: libservlet2.5-java
  Depends: libslf4j-java
  Depends: libxml-commons-external-java
  Suggests: libmysql-java
 |Recommends: solr-tomcat
  Recommends: solr-jetty

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