Installing packages without docs

I want to install a bunch of packages, but I don't want to install the documentation of them. How can I do this?

Exclude documentation from .deb installation (DPKG)

• Onetime option: --path-exclude could be used to filter out unwanted files when installing a package:

  dpkg -i --path-exclude=/usr/share/doc/* ...
  

• Permanent solution: Create a file /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/01_nodoc which specifies the desired filters. Example:

  path-exclude /usr/share/doc/*
  # we need to keep copyright files for legal reasons
  path-include /usr/share/doc/*/copyright
  path-exclude /usr/share/man/*
  path-exclude /usr/share/groff/*
  path-exclude /usr/share/info/*
  # lintian stuff is small, but really unnecessary
  path-exclude /usr/share/lintian/*
  path-exclude /usr/share/linda/*
  

Skip recommended dependencies (APT)

Then change /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99synaptics or create new file containing:

APT::Install-Recommends "false";

By the way, this is the permanent option of muru's answer for this question.

References:

• Reducing the size of the Debian Installation Footprint
• Ubuntu Wiki: ReducingDiskFootprint
• man dpkg

Usually, the doc packages are recommended by the main package, but aren't hard dependencies. If they were hard dependencies (for example, texlive-full), I don't think there's a safe or simple way. For recommended packages, the answer is simple:

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends <package-name>