Re: What else must I do to avoid installing "suggests"? Was: How to get a "minimal font set"?
On Fri, 04 Mar 2016, Kynn Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 11:03 AM, Stefan Monnier
> <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> >> Find a file somehow belonging to the font you are interested in.
> >> Do "dpkg -L <file name with path>" on it.
> > ^^
> > -S
>
> Thank you, that is a useful tool.
>
> When I ran `dpkg -S` over all the files reported by `fc-list`, and
> then ran `aptitude why` on the reported packages, I discovered that
> most of the superfluous fonts in my system came through packages that
> were only suggested by other packages.
>
> In fact, in many cases, the font-containing package is at the end of a
> chain of suggests, where each link in the chain is a suggests of the
> previous link.
>
> IOW, I have a ton of junk in my system, not just superfluous fonts.
>
> How can this be, given that I never use the `--install-suggests` flag
> when I run `apt-get install`, and I don't have `Item:
> APT::Install-Suggests` in my `/etc/apt/apt.conf`?
>
> I must have some big gap or error in my understanding of Debian
> package management and/or how `apt-get` works...
>
> What else do I have to do to avoid having all these suggested packages
> somehow get through to my system?
My system doesn't install "Suggests" by default. Never has. Only true
dependencies. How did you install your initial minimal system?
I started with just the Basic Install, terminal and networking from
a Wheezy 64-bit Netinstall CD (Jessie didn't exist), then added
piece by piece to end up with a lean X and window manager system. Is
that what you basically did?
B
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