Re: removing TexLive Docs packages

[Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 10:27:25AM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2015-12-23 at 09:55, Udyant Wig wrote:
> 
> > On 12/23/2015 12:15 PM, Sivaram Neelakantan wrote:
> > 
> >> I installed TexLive recently and during one of the upgrades, the 
> >> entire texdoc package got installed too.  that is humoungous and
> >> I'd like to remove the doc packages alone and also stop future
> >> installs of the same type whenever I Upgrade TexLive.
> > 
> >   An appreciable problem.

I used to worry this when I were on P5 system etc.
Now disk is cheap, so I do not care much. But ...

> >   # To prevent these packages from getting installed later:
> >   # aptitude hold '~ntexlive~ndoc'
> 
> Does this latter actually work?
> 
> I would expect it to use the same hold mechanism as 'apt-mark hold' or
> 'echo "packagename hold" | dpkg --set-selections', and in my experience
> holding a package as not installed does not work; it doesn't even get
> recorded in the package-selection state, and certainly doesn't get
> respected later when another package Depends or Recommends that package.
> 
> If that's been changed, or if there's a mechanism which avoids it and
> does work, I'd be very interested.

I agree.  I tested "hold" on an uninstalled package with aptitude,
nothing happened.

So your option is to use /etc/apt/preferences as described in
apt_preferences(5) where new glob(7) syntax for package is described.

This is not tested but it should be like:

           Package: /^texlive-.*-doc$/
           Pin: release a=*
           Pin-Priority: 10

This glob feature is available from apt (0.8.14)  Apr 2011.

Osamu