Re: Can imagemagick really be safely purged or removed?

[Roger Lynn <Roger@rilynn.me.uk>]

On 20/10/17 05:00, Celejar wrote:
> The description of the imagemagick package (8:6.9.7.4+dfsg-11+deb9u1)
> on my Stable system includes the statements:
> 
> "This is a dummy package.  You can safely purge or remove it."
> 
> But trying to remove it rips out cups, because:
> 
> ~$ aptitude why imagemagick
> i   cups         Depends cups-filters (>= 1.0.24-3~)
> i A cups-filters Depends imagemagick (>= 6.4~)
> 
> What gives?

imagemagick can only be removed when nothing depends on it.
imagemagick-6.q16 has been marked as replacing imagemagick, so most packages
which depend on imagemagick will automatically use imagemagick-6.q16.
However some packages, including cups-filters, depend on particular versions
of imagemagick and the automatic replacement doesn't appear to work in this
case.

You will only be able to remove imagemagick when cups-filters' dependencies
are updated or imagemagick-6.q16 finds a better way of declaring that it
provides imagemagick.

The :386 packages are irrelevant and only need installing in very specific
circumstances.

Roger