Re: Package Garbage Collection

[Martin Fluch <fluch@rock.helsinki.fi>]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Matt Miller wrote:

> How do I detect packages on which nothing depends?  I know I
> must have accumulated a number of these that I no longer want.
> 
> Short of running dselect (or storm?) and performing a package-
> by-package examination, what can be done to detect this potential
> garbage?

I guess there is nothing else you can do but just lunch dselect and check
every package you think you don't need (e.g. 'Do I like gimp or not on my
system?'), and when you decide that you don't, then try to tell dselect to
remove the package. Then dselect will present you the list of packages
which depend on the former package you want to remove and then you'll
finaly have to decide, if you _realy_ want to remove it (e.g. 'Do I like
libc6? - No, so let's see, what's happening, when I remove it! - Oh! I
better won't remove it!').

I think the problem with an automated grapage collection is, that if you
use it over and over again you will end up with an empty system or at
least an very basic system...

Martin