Re: cleanly getting rid of manually installed transitional packages due to rename
On 2020-04-21 21:02:42 +0200, deloptes wrote:
> Vincent Lefevre wrote:
>
> > On 2020-04-21 17:39:55 +0200, nito@dismail.de wrote:
> >> On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 17:07:52 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> >> > Sometimes packages get renamed. [...]
> >> >
> >> > [...] if one
> >> > wants to remove it, then apt or aptitude will also want to remove
> >> > the new package because this new package has not been installed
> >> > manually and its only reverse dependency (the transitional package)
> >> > has just been removed by this operation. [...]
> >> >
> >> > Is there a way to avoid this behavior automatically, i.e. by
> >> > forwarding the "manually installed" state automatically to the
> >> > new package?
> >>
> >> You can use apt-mark to mark the new package as manually installed.
> >
> > But I said *automatically*. I want to avoid tracking renames, as
> > it is easy to forget something, and some important package could
> > be removed in case of mistake (if I forget to mark the package
> > as manually installed).
>
> your case "sometimes" is nothing concrete. From my experience the best with
> debian is to follow the stream (collective IQ is higher than yours). If
> package is being renamed there is usually a replacement. You install the
> replacement and can remove whatever needs to.
You did not understand. Doing this removes both the transitional
package *and* the new (renamed) package... unless one marks the new
package as manually installed (which is the thing that I wanted to
be done automatically).
> I can't imagine handling all the packages that were installed automatically
> and marking them one by one. Why should I - better open your eyes when get
> asked what would be installed as dependency and decide what to do with it
> on the sport.
>
> If important package is removed though there are two ways. You either notice
> immediately and reinstall it, or you were just thinking it was important :)
No. The package could be so important that if it were uninstalled
first, one could lose the network connection, which would be terribly
bad when one cannot have a physical access to the machine before
several days or weeks. Even if things still seem to be fine after the
uninstall, things could break in the future, and it could be difficult
to trace back to the original cause.
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
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