Re: safe to purge older versions of installed software?

[Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com>]

On Saturday 22 August 2009 12:52:54 Robert P. J. Day wrote:

>   so the question now becomes, if i run that command on both
> gcc-4.2-base and gcc-4.3-base, it looks like (not surprisingly) the
> 4.2 package has lots of 4.2-related reverse dependencies, and likewise
> for gcc-4.3-base.  so do i really need the 4.2 stuff?
>
>   if anyone has a fully-updated *lenny* system and they're willing to
> run the same commands, is there anything about the output from the 4.2
> version that would suggest that it needs to be retained, given that
> 4.3 is on the system?
>
>   and on the system i'm upgrading, there are a number of packages that
> are installed with more than one version.  i'd just like to clean that
> system by purging anything that has no value.

lisi@Tux:~$ apt-cache rdepends gcc-4.2
gcc-4.2
Reverse Depends:
  gcc-4.2-doc
  gcc-4.2-doc
  gobjc-4.2
  gfortran-4.2
  gcj-4.2
  gcc-avr
  gcc-4.2-multilib
  gcc-4.2-multilib
  gcc-4.2-locales
  g++-4.2
  cpp-4.2
lisi@Tux:~$ apt-cache rdepends gcc-4.3
gcc-4.3
Reverse Depends:
  gcc-4.3-doc
  gcc-4.3-doc
  protoize
  gobjc-4.3
  gnat-4.3
  gfortran-4.3
  gcj-4.3
  gcc-4.3-multilib
  gcc-4.3-locales
  gcc
  g++-4.3
  g++
  fixincludes
lisi@Tux:~$   

I've also got gcc-4.1, which has a much longer list of dependencies than 
either of those.

HTH
Lisi