Re: apt-get doesn't upgrade, but synaptic does

[Patrick Bartek <bartek047@yahoo.com>]

On Sun, 13 Apr 2014, Sven Joachim wrote:

> On 2014-04-13 05:59 +0200, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 12 Apr 2014, Brad Rogers wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 18:28:04 -0700
> >> Patrick Bartek <bartek047@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> 
> [snip]
> >> 
> >> Not even the meta-package 'libreoffice'?
> >
> > I rechecked, and the metapackage is removed, but not any of
> > libreoffice modules.
> 
> In the past, removing a metapackage caused its dependencies to be
> autoremoved as well, and people complained about that apt wanted to
> remove half their system as soon as they decided to uninstall a
> dependency of the gnome metapackage.  Therefore, apt's behavior wrt
> metapackages was changed to _not_ mark their dependencies as
> automatically installed. 

Remember that quirk well.  What a nightmare it caused if you were trying
to "slim" down a system of unneeded or unwanted files when everything
is a dependent of everything else.

> > Ultimately, I just purged each of the modules by name, then
> > autoremove the orphaned dependencies.
> >
> > There should be an easier way.
> 
> You could use aptitude to mark the dependencies as auto-installed
> (untested):
> 
> # aptitude markauto "~Dlibreoffice"
> 
> Then you can autoremove them as you wish.

Not all that knowledgeable of aptitude.  Wary of using an untested
procedure of a utility I'm unfamiliar with.  That's surely asking for
trouble. However, I did come up with a possible method to more easily
uninstall meta-package installed apps.

First, find the one module of the app that is the dependancy for all the
others, but is itself not dependent on them.  Does that make sense?
With libreoffice, it's libreoffice-common.  Purge just that one module,
i.e. apt-get purge libreoffice-common, and that should automatically get
most all the others. Then autoremove to get any orphaned dependencies.
Then do a search for any lingering modules, and purge them if found.

With libreoffice, I did an apt-get purge libreoffice* which found
one: libreoffice-filters-something-or-other.  I then manually deleted
the libreoffice directory in the user's .config directory.  All gone.

I'm hoping this technique will work with other such apps until
something easier is invented.

Thanks for the info and the suggestion.

B