Re: Bug#704424: release-notes: sufficient-space hints give confusing advice
Justin B Rye wrote:
> [...] It seems to me we should put all our coverage of
> redundant packages in 4.4.3 (mentioning "apt-get autoremove" and
> avoiding the word "obsolete"), put all our coverage of relic packages
> in 4.9, and leave the two sections completely unconnected.
Here's an attempt at a patch to do that. I've had to do a lot of
rephrasing (when you put it all together the current version is fairly
repetitive), but more importantly I don't know whether the formatting
still works.
Is it still true that deborphan is "highly recommended", or is that a
leftover from the days when it was the only tool that implemented any
of this functionality?
And does popcon-largest-unused still work? It thinks I don't use my
web browser or window manager. Is it trying to find unused packages
by looking at the file access datestamps on a /usr file system that's
mounted noatime? Yup, and even relatime (now the default) will cause
trouble - see #298760.
Cobwebs, cobwebs everywhere. For now I'll stick to this one issue.
Except that once I've collected under one bulletpoint all the ways of
finding removal candidates on the basis of redundant ex-dependencies,
it becomes obvious that popcon-largest-unused doesn't fit there; it
fits with all the other suggestions for finding removal candidates on
the basis of size, which are currently split between several
bulletpoints. So I've consolidated all of those, too.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
Index: upgrading.dbk
===================================================================
--- upgrading.dbk (revision 9682)
+++ upgrading.dbk (working copy)
@@ -715,32 +715,46 @@
<listitem>
<para>
Remove forgotten packages. If you have
-<systemitem role="package">popularity-contest</systemitem> installed, you can use
-<command>popcon-largest-unused</command> to list the packages you do not use
-that occupy the most space. You can also use
-<command>deborphan</command> or <command>debfoster</command> to find obsolete
-packages (see <xref linkend="obsolete"/> ). Alternatively you can start
-<command>aptitude</command> in <quote>visual mode</quote> and find obsolete packages under
-<quote>Obsolete and Locally Created Packages</quote>.
+used <command>aptitude</command> or <command>apt-get</command> to manually
+install packages in &oldreleasename; it will have kept track of those packages
+you manually installed, and will be able to mark as redundant those packages
+pulled in by dependencies alone which are no longer needed due to a package being
+removed. They will not mark for removal packages that you manually installed. To
+remove automatically installed packages that are no longer used, run:
</para>
+<screen>
+# apt-get autoremove
+</screen>
+<para>
+You can also use <command>deborphan</command>,
+<command>debfoster</command>, or <command>cruft</command> to find
+redundant packages. <command>deborphan</command> is highly recommended,
+although it will (in default mode) only report redundant libraries: packages
+in the <quote><literal>libs</literal></quote> or
+<quote><literal>oldlibs</literal></quote> sections that are not used by any
+other packages. Do not blindly remove the packages these tools present,
+especially if you are using aggressive non-default options that are prone to
+false positives. It is highly recommended that you manually review the
+packages suggested for removal (i.e. their contents, sizes, and descriptions)
+before you remove them.
+</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Remove packages that take up too much space and are not currently
-needed (you
-can always reinstall them after the upgrade). You can list the packages that
-take up the most disk space with <command>dpigs</command> (available in the
-<systemitem role="package">debian-goodies</systemitem> package) or with
-<command>wajig</command> (running <literal>wajig size</literal>).
-</para>
-<para>
-You can list packages that take up most of the disk space with
-<systemitem role="package">aptitude</systemitem>. Start
-<command>aptitude</command> in <quote>visual mode</quote>,
+needed (you can always reinstall them after the upgrade). If you have
+<systemitem role="package">popularity-contest</systemitem> installed,
+you can use <command>popcon-largest-unused</command> to list the
+packages you do not use that occupy the most space. You can find the
+packages that just take up the most disk space with <command>dpigs</command>
+(available in the <systemitem role="package">debian-goodies</systemitem>
+package) or with <command>wajig</command> (running <literal>wajig
+size</literal>). They can also be found with <systemitem role="package">aptitude</systemitem>.
+Start <command>aptitude</command> in its full-screen <quote>visual mode</quote>,
select <menuchoice><guimenu>Views</guimenu><guimenuitem>New Flat Package
List</guimenuitem></menuchoice>, press <keycap>l</keycap> and enter
-<literal>~i</literal>, press <keycap>S</keycap> and enter
-<literal>~installsize</literal>, then it will give you nice list to work
+<literal>~i</literal>, then press <keycap>S</keycap> and enter
+<literal>~installsize</literal>. This will give you a handy list to work
with.
</para>
</listitem>
@@ -1896,7 +1910,8 @@
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
-Remove obsolete and unused packages as described in <xref linkend="obsolete"/>.
+Remove newly redundant or obsolete packages as described in
+<xref linkend="sufficient-space"/> and <xref linkend="obsolete"/>.
You should review which configuration files they use and consider purging
the packages to remove their configuration files.
</para>
@@ -1955,32 +1970,6 @@
<quote>Obsolete and Locally Created Packages</quote> entry.
</para>
<para>
-Also, if you have used <command>aptitude</command> or
-<command>apt-get</command> to manually install packages in &oldreleasename;
-it will have kept track of those packages you manually installed and will be
-able to mark as obsolete those packages pulled in by dependencies alone which
-are no longer needed if a package has been removed.
-<command>aptitude</command> and <systemitem role="package">apt</systemitem>,
-unlike <command>deborphan</command>, will not mark for removal packages that
-you manually installed, as opposed to those that were automatically
-installed through dependencies. To remove automatically installed packages
-that are no longer used, run:
-</para>
-<screen>
-# apt-get autoremove
-</screen>
-<para>
-There are additional tools you can use to find obsolete packages such as
-<command>deborphan</command>, <command>debfoster</command> or
-<command>cruft</command>. <command>deborphan</command> is highly recommended,
-although it will (in default mode) only report obsolete libraries: packages in
-the <quote><literal>libs</literal></quote> or <quote><literal>oldlibs</literal></quote> sections that are not used by any other packages. Do not
-blindly remove the packages these tools present, especially if you are using
-aggressive non-default options that are prone to produce false positives. It
-is highly recommended that you manually review the packages suggested for
-removal (i.e. their contents, size and description) before you remove them.
-</para>
-<para>
The <ulink url="&url-bts;">Debian Bug Tracking System</ulink>
often provides additional information on why the package was removed. You
should review both the archived bug reports for the package itself and the
@@ -2138,7 +2127,7 @@
to improve system maintainability. To ease the upgrade path in such cases,
&releasename; often provides <quote>dummy</quote> packages: empty packages that have the same name as
the old package in &oldreleasename; with dependencies that cause the new packages to be
-installed. These <quote>dummy</quote> packages are considered obsolete packages after the
+installed. These <quote>dummy</quote> packages are considered redundant after the
upgrade and can be safely removed.
</para>
<para>
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