On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 09:05:09AM +1000, Chris Angelico wrote: > On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 8:56 AM, Tom Furie <tom@furie.org.uk> wrote: > > This seems an odd choice to make. If I installed a meta-package because > > I couldn't be bothered to investigate which individual packages I > > wanted, or just wanted to explore the whole package, then decide I don't > > want that package, so remove the meta-package, nothing now gets removed? > > It's a bit odd either way. Let's suppose you install Debian Squeeze > (again, I don't know where the policy changed, but I know it was since > Squeeze), and then decide that you don't want (say) Open Office. You > uninstall it, but since there was a metapackage "gnome" (if I have the > name right) that depended on it, apt-get removes that package. And > then everything else that was installed from that metapackage is now > free to be removed, right? Along with everything else that was pulled > in by them. This touches on the dependancy relationships discussion that was below the part quoted. If non-core functionality would be a Recommends: relation rather than a Depends: relation then components of the meta-package could be removed painlessly. In your example above, while gnome depends on openoffice, openoffice cannot be removed without also removing gnome and thus anything that was pulled in by gnome. However, while it is /nice/ to have an office suite in your desktop environment it is by no means a requirement, therefore if the gnome->openoffice relationship was downgraded to a Recommends: the openoffice package could be removed without any further disruption to the system. Cheers, Tom -- Well thaaaaaaat's okay.
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