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Re: How shall I report a bug in the .deb packaging itself?



On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 01:35:21PM +0100, Alberto Salvia Novella wrote:
> Julian Andres Klode:
> > It just happens that some of the newly installed dependencies are also
> > Suggested by other installed packages, and thus are not removed,
> > because you might have installed the package in order to extend the
> > functionality of another installed package suggesting it.
> 
> sudo apt-get install cortina -y
> sudo apt-get purge cortina -y
> sudo apt-get autoremove -y
> 
> Result: the recommended dependencies installed only during this operation
> are not removed. Now we have the GNOME Display Manager, and also plenty of
> extra wallpapers, among others.

This is intended. Some other packages that were previously installed
merely suggest gdm, so the end result is that the package will stay
installed.

If you don't want that, you can set 
  APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant
to false.

Especially in the cortina case, why would you expect something
else? It is a manager for GNOME, and thus requires GNOME specific
stuff.

> 
> 
> Ralf Mardorf at <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>:
> > autoremove could consider recommended dependencies as automatically
> > installed, but likely already now some users complain that autoremove
> > uninstalls software they still want to use.
> 
> So the root cause is in autoremove, not in the package management. Just
> taking one specimen using the above example:
> - Installing cortina installs the gnome-shell as dependency
> - gnome-shell installs gdm as recommended packages
> - gdm installs the gnome-icon-theme as recommended package
> 
> So using autoremove without touching the recommended packages will leave
> plenty of stuff there, in a fashion that is costly to trace back.

Slow explanation:

autoremove will remove all packages that no other package
PreDepends, Depends, Recommends, or Suggests.

Example. If you installed:
	A (Suggests X)
without installing X and  then install
	B (Recommends X)
	X (due to B)
that X will not be removed, as you might have installed it to extend
the functionality of A. If you don't want that, set
APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant

> 
> 
> Ralf Mardorf
> > Already now some users complain that autoremove uninstalls software
> > they still want to use.
> 
> I think that if an user wants to install something to stay there, they will
> do explicitly and not through a third package.
> 
> More surprising is that the "install" and "remove" buttons do not act on the
> same software.

This is not surprising if you understand how things work.

What we might like is an undo command which undoes the last operation,
as we store all changes in a machine-readable log file.


-- 
Julian Andres Klode  - Debian Developer, Ubuntu Member

See http://wiki.debian.org/JulianAndresKlode and http://jak-linux.org/.

When replying, only quote what is necessary, and write each reply
directly below the part(s) it pertains to (`inline'). Thank you.


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