Re: Too many Recommends (in particular on mail-transport-agent)

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org>]

On Wed, Jun 07, 2017 at 03:26:35PM +0200, Christian Seiler wrote:
>...
>  - You install package A, which Recommends: B, but you don't
>    want B, notice that at the time, and either remove B
>    afterwards, or install A with --no-install-recommends. But
>    then you install package C at a later point in time, which
>    actually depends on B. You notice that C is not what you
>    wanted, purge it again, but apt-get autoremove will _not_
>    remove B, even though it's automatically installed, because
>    A recommends it.
> 
>    So basically, the following command sequence may or may not
>    leave your system in an identical state, depending on the
>    packages that previously have been installed on your system:
> 
>       apt-get install A
>       apt-get purge A
>       apt-get autoremove --purge
> 
>    Unfortunately, I don't see a good solution to this problem,
>    and I've thought about this a lot in the past.
>...

apt-get blacklist-from-recommends-install B
(or a similar entry in a configuration file)

This would help people who have a strong need/desire to opt out of some 
specific package (e.g. pulseaudio) when it would otherwise be pulled in 
through recommends.

> Regards,
> Christian

cu
Adrian

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