Re: aptitude --purge

[Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org>]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 07:53:56AM +0800, jidanni@jidanni.org was heard to say:
> I find no way in aptitude to
> # aptitude install telnet-ssl
> Reading package lists... Done  <- Get rid of these messages, and
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
>   telnet-ssl
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
>   telnet{a} <- also purge instead of removing. I.e., nothing like
> APT::Get::Purge. The undocumented --purge doesn't work like apt-get's.

  There is no --purge option, which is presumably why it doesn't work.
The closest thing to it is --purge-unused, which causes packages being
removed because they're unused to also get purged.

  According to the apt-get manual page, --purge purges anything that is
being removed.  The only thing I can think of that gets you close to
what you want is "aptitude -s install telnet-ssl '?action(remove)_'",
but I don't think that is really adequate (it won't handle stuff that
gets removed due in interactive dependency resolution, for instance).

  I thought at first that I could just set all the stuff being removed
to be purged as well, just before aptitude shows its prompt.  But
that's not right either: the user should be able to cancel individual
purges and have that stick.  So I guess the only way out is to hack the
backend so that when a hypothetical Aptitude::Purge is enabled, it
flicks packages to "purge" when they're first marked for removal and
not afterwards.

  I suppose you could file a wishlist bug asking for this feature to be
added.

  Daniel