Debian virtual packages
Debian virtual packages
Posted Nov 27, 2025 16:59 UTC (Thu) by timon (subscriber, #152974)In reply to: portable APT? by Wol
Parent article: APT Rust requirement raises questions
Debian does have virtual packages [1], e. g. “xserver” [2]; those you cannot install but they are provided by other packages. Debian also has metapackages [3], e. g. “init” [4] corresponding to your Gentoo example; those you can actually install, and they will then pull in relevant dependencies providing the actual functionality. The “apt” package [5] however doesn’t provide any relevant virtual package name.
[1]: https://packages.debian.org/stable/virtual/
[2]: https://packages.debian.org/stable/xserver
[3]: https://packages.debian.org/stable/metapackages/
[4]: https://packages.debian.org/stable/init
[5]: https://packages.debian.org/stable/apt