Bug#352267: apt-get --purge remove dbus-1 purges far too much
Steve Langasek wrote:
tags 352267 moreinfo unreproducible
severity 352267 normal
thanks
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 08:46:26PM +0000, Greg Kochanski wrote:
I expected this to purge dbus-1. I expected that other packages
would be removed (because they depend on dbus-1), but not purged.
Well, that's an incorrect assumption; for a package to be purged, packages
depending on it must also be purged.
Not so. They must be either removed OR purged; there is no special
need for them to be purged.
Lo and Behold, a dozen packages were purged. The darn thing
didn't even stop to ask me!
Well, I *definitely* can't reproduce this. If I try to purge a package that
has reverse-dependencies installed on the system, I get this:
# apt-get --purge remove samba-common
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
libpam-smbpass* linpopup* samba* samba-common* smbclient* smbfs* swat* winbind*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 8 to remove and 36 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 29.7MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
#
Which explicitly lists all the packages to be removed.
Yes, it says REMOVED, not PURGED. It did not remove them, it purged
them. It did not inform the user what it was going to do.
A user who actually reads the man page and knows the difference between
remove and purge would be rather upset after he agrees to the removal
(in the expectation that the packages can be easily restored),
and finds that they are actually purged.
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