whypkg

why the hell is this package here? 🕵️

A fast, cross-distro package investigator. Fuzzy-find any installed package and see, instantly: did you install it or did something pull it in, when, what it came alongside, what needs it, and what it needs — then drill through the whole dependency web, following the thread inward and outward.

It started life as the bash apt-why / apt-pending scripts (kept in legacy/); this is the Rust rewrite — one self-contained binary, no external fzf, and built to grow beyond apt.

Install

cargo install whypkg

Update later with whypkg update (or cargo install whypkg --force).

Use

whypkg                 # browse every installed package
whypkg --upgradable    # browse only packages with a pending upgrade
whypkg pending         # report every pending upgrade, grouped by why it's here
whypkg pending --quick # one line per pending package: size + reason

Inside the browser: type to fuzzy-filter, Enter to open a package's dossier, Esc to go back a level (a breadcrumb shows your trail), Ctrl-C to quit. [M] = you installed it, [A] = pulled in automatically, ↑ = an upgrade is available.

Why it's fast

Everything is loaded once at startup into an in-memory graph; every hop while you browse is a hash-map lookup, not a subprocess. The slowest part is your package manager's own queries (~½ second), not whypkg.

Distro support

Each package manager lives behind a single Backend trait — the analysis and the UI are distro-agnostic, so adding pacman or dnf is one focused file.

License

AGPL-3.0-only.