Re: Packages.

[hendrik@topoi.pooq.com]

On Sat, Dec 08, 2007 at 05:51:13PM -0200, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:
> Nuno Magalhães wrote:
> >Hi.
> >
> >Whenever i install Debian, i always use the netinst and select nothing
> >but the base system.
> 
> Same here.
> 
> > Then it's apt al the way: first X, then a
> >lightweight WM plus whatever i need. However, even with a "minimal"
> >install there are always a bunch of packages that i didn't choose and
> >that (apparently) aren't used by any other package.
> >  
> 
> This did not happen to me, though.
> 
> >This time i decided to nstall X from the installer menu, so i got
> >X+GNOME. I still had to work around the xorg.conf to get it working
> >(framebuffer). The thing is, i'm allergic to unused packages and i
> >dislike big desktop enviroments like GNOME or KDE. And i know that if
> >i do apt-get remove --purge gnome* there will still be leftovers, like
> >Evolution.
> >
> >I don't think neither apt nor aptitude (or even synaptic, another
> >usual leftover) have this, but is there a way to know if a package is
> >depended upon? Automagically removing it if not? Actually my favourite
> >is apt, i dislike the other two.
> >  
> 
> deborphan shows packages that are orphaned, that is, nothing depends on 
> them. I'm not sure if it can automatically remove them, but that's easy 
> to do anyway. However, I'd do that via aptitude, see below.
> 
> >I'm going through the list of installed packages and their
> >descriptions in the debian site, i even have a fortune-cookies
> >package! Wtf? And i skipped all the lib* and x* ones... How can i get
> >rid of everything gnome?
> >  
> 
> What I recomend is to use aptitude, and press M (or was it m? well, 
> whatever) to mark the packages you feel you don't need as automatically 
> installed. Then if nothing depends on them, they will be removed. You 
> might want to press 'l' and enter something like this
> 
> !~pimportant!~prequired!~M
> 
> to get a list of packages that are not marked as automatically installed 
> (that is, they are not a dependency of something else that got 
> automatically pulled in) and are not marked 'important' or 'required'. 
> And aptitude lets you see quickly what a package is for.
> 
> Another thing that you can try is simply ask the package to be removed. 
> If you get broken packages or other things are being removed, then the 
> package is needed by something else.

If you use aptitude interactively, it gives you a chance to back out of 
the removal before it goes ahead with it (I think with a 
control-U). But once you go ahead with it, you're stuck.

-- hendrik