Gerard Robin schrieb:
On Sat, Feb 03, 2007 at 10:21:04AM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:it is why I asked advices, by example: if I remove libc6-i386 and after that I install a package x.deb which needs it, will libc6-i386 be reinstalled as dependency of the package x.deb ?From: "Roberto C. Sanchez" <roberto@connexer.com> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: deborphan Mail-Followup-To: "Roberto C. Sanchez" <roberto@connexer.com>, On Sat, Feb 03, 2007 at 03:34:10PM +0100, Gerard Robin wrote:can I remove merely this packages ?That depends. Do you use any of them?
Yes, the package wouldn't be able to install faultlessly if the dependencies weren't met, that's the whole point. I've never used deborphan but if it finds that these packages aren't used anymore than you can safely remove them, because:
a.) Debian packages are commonly well tested, so generally every package is expected to do what it should. (Sounds pretty superficial, but imho problems with software in debian arise mostly from the fact that it was not installed in a debian way or the user doesn't know the software well enough to configure it the way he wants to use it) b.) Its a package dealing with a package format that originated from and was developed for debian, so if a. is to be untrue 20% of the time then this will make the probability of a being untrue >1% (I sense this is gonna turn out to be a comical coders-short ;)) c.) I don't know exactly how deporphan works but my guess is that it parses the dpkg-database for all the packages installed, reads their dependencies and then rules out which packages are installed but are neither marked as having been manually installed nor are being depended upon by any of the other packages installed. Pretty easy I'd say. And as an additional debugger it gives you (the user) a list of all the packages that match the above named criteria. So, essentially the chance of wrecking your system by uninstalling the suggested packages should be pretty low. ( I know I'm one sardonic bastard, but I like it, AND this is my honest opinion)
Cheerio, Roman. So