Re: Remove Evolution

[Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk>]

On Thu 23 May 2013 at 22:59:00 -0400, Stephen Allen wrote:

> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 01:06:23PM +0100, Brian wrote:
> > On Wed 22 May 2013 at 07:34:03 -0400, Stephen Allen wrote:
> > 
> > > I'd like to remove Evolution from my Debian laptop installation as I use
> > > my browser to access email/calendar online via my tablet or phone.
> > > 
> > > When I attempt to do so, aptitude informs me that it will remove pretty
> > > much the entire Gnome-Shell as well. How do I remove what I want while
> > > keeping my desktop whole (sans Evolution)?
> > 
> > With aptitude:
> > 
> >    http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article8/uninstall-meta-package
> > 
> > 
> ---end quoted text---
> 
> Unfortunately this suggestion didn't work. I had already marked
> Evolution packages as manually installed.

You may have done but the blog page doesn't offer that as a technique.
We may as well put its advice here:

  Well, there is a solution: marking all the dependencies of the
  meta-package as manually installed, that is, faking that you installed
  them explicitly Aptitude is able to do that with its powerful search
  functions:

  aptitude unmarkauto '?reverse-depends(gnome) | ?reverse-recommends(gnome)'
  aptitude unmarkauto '?reverse-depends(gnome-core) | ?reverse-recommends(gnome-core)'
  aptitude unmarkauto '?reverse-depends(gnome-desktop-environment) | ?reverse-recommends(gnome-desktop-environment)'

This works for me to purge Evolution without removing other needed
software.