Re: aptitude

[hendrik@topoi.pooq.com]

On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 09:53:59PM +0100, Nelson Menezes wrote:
> Jo Shields wrote:
> >Alexander Kostadinov wrote:
> >
> >>I follow instructions to install xen and when I write
> >>aptitude remove exim4 exim4-base lpr nfs-common portmap pidentd 
> >>pcmcia-cs pppoe pppoeconf ppp pppconfig
> >>It wants to remove 501MB of packages most of which it says are unused 
> >>and one of them is udev...
> >>I think this is weird.
> >>Any opinions?
> >
> >
> >aptitude has integrated orphan management, to allow for cleaner system 
> >management. For example, if you "aptitude install kde", then when you 
> >"aptitude purge kde", it will remove all the dependancies that came in 
> >automatically (whereas apt-get would only remove the kde metapackage, 
> >and leave the other few hundred meg of packages). Additionally, if you 
> >"aptitude purge" some dependant package such as kcalc, then the kde 
> >metapackage is removed (as the dependancy is no longer satisfied), and 
> >because "kde" is removed, so are all the other dependancies pulled in by 
> >that metapackage.
> >
> >Your problem is going to be that some package you removed either depends 
> >on udev (and is therefore the cause of udev's installation), or is 
> >depended on by something that depends on udev (therefore the dependant 
> >package is removed, along with its dependancies).
> >
> >There's a mantra to mark all current packages as manual (i.e. don't 
> >automatically remove them), but I can't remember it off the top of my head.
> 
> You can also tell aptitude to keep your currently-installed packages by 
> pressing "=" at the top levels of the tree.

Wouldn't you want to mark them '+'?  '=' would keep them from ever being 
upgraded themselves.

-- hendrik