Re: How to tell WHY apt wants to install so many packages

[Marc Shapiro <mshapiro_42@yahoo.com>]

andreas.sumper@nimbus.at wrote:
>  Dave Ewart <davee@sungate.co.uk> wrote on 18/01/2005 06:12:44 PM:
>
>  > On Tuesday, 18.01.2005 at 17:39 +0100, Christian Schnobrich wrote:
>  >
>  > > On Tue, 2005-01-18 at 09:31 -0500, Marc Shapiro wrote:
>  > > > Is there any package, or command, that will go through the "depends'
>  > > > for a packages and tell me exactly why apt-get wants to install over
>  > > > 30MB of packages when all I am trying to do is remove ONE package.
>  > >
>  > > I have not gone through your list and tried to figure it out. This is
>  > > just the first thought that crossed my mind:
>  > >
>  > > apt will by default try to update packages where a newer version is
>  > > available. So even if all you type ist "apt-get install something", it
>  > > will not only get the the package something, but also fetch newer
>  > > versions of already-installed packages as if you typed "apt-get
>  > > upgrade".
>  > >
>  > > I don't know if this can be turned off somewhere. My personal
>  > > workaround is not to update the package lists until I want to upgrade.
>  > > So in the meantime apt-get won't even know that there is a newer
>  > > version and hence won't upgrade.
>  >
>  > But 'apt-get upgrade' isn't supposed to add or remove any packages,
>  > simply replace newer versions of older versions of already-installed
>  > packages.
>  >
>  > 'apt-get dist-upgrade' will play with dependencies.
>  >
>  > I also don't understand why an 'apt-get install' or 'apt-get remove'
>  > seems to pick up the behaviour of 'apt-get dist-upgrade' in this
>  > context.
>
> Maybe some packages have not be installed correctly in the past. Try 
> apt-get -f install to see, if any packages are missing. After that try 
> apt-get remove yourunwantedpackage and only this one should be removed...

No luck:  "apt-get -f install" did nothing and the remove still wants to 
update 10 packages and install 21 new ones.

:~$ sudo apt-get -f install
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 115 not upgraded.

:~$ sudo apt-get remove kdewallpapers
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  bc cupsys cupsys-bsd cupsys-client gv hicolor-icon-theme kdebase-data
  ksysguardd libarts1 libaspell15 libcupsimage2 libcupsys2 
libcupsys2-gnutls10
  libdb4.2 libidn11 libjasper-1.701-1 libnetpbm10 libopenexr2 libperl5.8
  libraw1394-5 libsensors3 menu-xdg netpbm perl perl-base perl-doc
  perl-modules perl-suid poster psutils xaw3dg
Suggested packages:
  cupsys-driver-gimpprint xpdf-korean xpdf-japanese 
xpdf-chinese-traditional
  xpdf-chinese-simplified kdeprint gtklp cupsys-pt akode aspell-bin
  libjasper-runtime lm-sensors lm-sensors-mod-2.9 kernel-image-2.6
  libterm-readline-perl-perl groff
Recommended packages:
  smbclient aspell-en aspell-dictionary
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  kdebase kdewallpapers
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  bc gv hicolor-icon-theme kdebase-data ksysguardd libarts1 libaspell15
  libcupsys2-gnutls10 libdb4.2 libidn11 libjasper-1.701-1 libnetpbm10
  libopenexr2 libraw1394-5 libsensors3 menu-xdg netpbm perl-suid poster
  psutils xaw3dg
The following held packages will be changed:
  kdebase-data kdewallpapers
The following packages will be upgraded:
  cupsys cupsys-bsd cupsys-client libcupsimage2 libcupsys2 libperl5.8 perl
  perl-base perl-doc perl-modules
10 upgraded, 21 newly installed, 2 to remove and 104 not upgraded.
Need to get 30.3MB/30.7MB of archives.
After unpacking 8602kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.


--
Marc Shapiro
mshapiro_42@yahoo.com