Quoting Frans Pop (elendil@planet.nl): > The main reason IIRC is that leaving the packages makes it unnecessary to > download them again if part of e.g. tasksel fails for whatever reason and > the user has to install some packages manually (after ignoring that > error - which is a real option as the base system should still be > functional - and completing the installation). > Think of a (partially) failed desktop install over a relatively slow > network connection. > > IMO that argument is valid, but I also don't think that by itself it's > enough to decide one way or another. > > I have no very strong feelings about this. Cleaning up is a good idea in .../... Since yesterday, I was trying to find out why I was recently wondering the same thing...and I finally found today..:-) Indeed, I witnessed my son installing Debian on a Dell mini 9 netbook. He did choose a default desktop install (with Gnome and stuff) as these beasts are powerful enough for such "heavy" desktop environment. Still, he was monitoring the disk space ans was wondering whether everything would fit in, particularly at the critical moment where .deb files are downloaded...and the time they're all installed. I explained him that it if goes well (it did) he should "apt-get clean" after the installation so that downloaded files no longer eat the short disk spaces he has. And, of course, he asked me THE question: "but why don't you guys clean this out automatically at the end of the install?".... I have to admit that I was having hard times finding a good argument to explain..:-) So, yes, I'd vote to have, by default a cleaning of the package cache at the end of the install. IMHO, that fits the most common use case. Maybe, for more corner cases where keepign the cache would be good, could we have a low priority option (or a preseed-only choice) to *not* clean the cache?
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