Cost of packages in disk space?

[Alois Mahdal <alois.mahdal.1-ndmail@zxcvb.cz>]

Hello,

I know that due to numerous dependencies and relations, it is
a complicated question how much disk space a package costs:

*   Do we want to count dependencies?  How deep (we don't want
    to count libc* 10000 times, do we)?

*   Do we want to separately address
    *   `purge`able ~/.app-data?
    *   /etc/app/settings?
    *   /var/logs/app?

*   Or are we looking for more sophisticated advice like "hey,
    do you know that libhuge is required only by this
    hardlyeverused-app"?  ("think about upgrade costs, dude!")

However, are there tools that attempt to provide this kind of
help?  Or at least answer the partial questions?  Or can
apt*/dpkg do this?

Typical use case is when one is running out of disk space
on / or /usr/.  Such tool could be applied in much wider
sense, though.

Suggestions?

Thanks,
aL.

-- 
Alois Mahdal