Shows manually installed packages on Debian-like operating system, like Ubuntu

apt-unique

#!/bin/sh -eu
# Shows manually installed packages on Debian / Ubuntu system
#
# Author: Joel Lehtonen <[email protected]>
# Public domain. If you found this useful, please donate to
# 1FvEggFtNSYS9pcBoYB9wDxH9fa1mrNPW5
MANIFEST=

usage() {
    cat <<EOF
Usage: `basename $0` [-c MANIFEST_URL]

When run without any option it shows manually installed packages on your system.
This includes packages installed by operating system installer, too.

To exclude packages provided by the installer and list only the packages you
have installed yourself, use -c parameter with URL of manifest file to compare
with. For example:

    -c http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/saucy/ubuntu-13.10-desktop-amd64.manifest

Replace distribution name, architehture, and version in the URL, if needed.
EOF
    exit 2
}

while getopts :c: OPT; do
    case $OPT in
	c|+c)
	    TMPFILE=`mktemp`
	    MANIFEST=`mktemp`
	    # Avoiding pipelines because we want to catch curl errors
	    curl -f -s -S -o "$TMPFILE" -- "$OPTARG"
	    cut -f 1 <"$TMPFILE" | sort >"$MANIFEST"
	    rm -- "$TMPFILE"
	    ;;
	*) usage ;;
    esac
done

test $OPTIND -le $# && usage

if test -z "$MANIFEST"; then
    # Normal operation, no comparison
    apt-mark showmanual | sort
else
    apt-mark showmanual | sort | comm -1 -3 "$MANIFEST" -
    rm -- "$MANIFEST"
fi