Re: apt-get autoclean

[David <dbree@duo-county.com>]

On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 08:57:07AM -0600, Kent West wrote:
> Aldebaran wrote:
 
> >On Thursday 23 December 2004 04:57 am, Sam Watkins wrote:

> >>On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 01:18:38PM -0600, Kent West wrote:

> >>>Ah! That'll definitely cause problems. I would recommend running
> >>>"apt-get autoclean".

> >>Speaking of "apt-get autoclean", I think it would be nice to have an
> >>option that does what autoclean does, but also deletes any packages that
> >>have been installed on your computer.  If it's installed ok already, we
> >>don't need the archive, right?

> >Thats what apt-get clean does right?

> No; "clean" cleans out all the packages from the local repository, 
> regardless of whether those packages have been installed or not. Sam's 
> idea would be useful, in that maybe you've downloaded 400MB of packages 
> over the past 3 or 4 Sid upgrades, and then this next time you run out 
> of space on /var about halfway through downloading a new 50MB of files. 
> These packages are now taking up about 425MB space, and you need an 
> additional 25 to finish your upgrade. With Sam's idea, you could clean 
> out those 400MB worth of packages which are already installed, without 
> cleaning out the 25MB or so you've just downloaded for the most recent 
> upgrade.

I'm not sure I'm correct here, but from what I have observed,
"autoclean" removes all packages that have a later version.  I may not
be correct on this, but if correct, this should take care of most space
problems.  If you are simply "upgrading", you'd probably have the older
version of a package in the database.  Therefore, "autoclean" would
remove the older version thus making room for the newer version.  Except
in rare cases, a newer version of a package should not be appreciably
larger than the previous, so if you ran out of space then, you probably
ought to make different arrangements on your disk anyway.

Personally, I prefer to not do an "autoclean" until I'm sure that all
current packages are not buggy and I wouldn't want to downgrade any of
them.