Bug#352267: apt-get --purge remove dbus-1 purges far too much
Christian Perrier wrote:
Except the two hamsters, I'm afraid I'm having all of the above and up
You have no concept how many wood shavings two hamsters can put on the
floor and the vacuuming required.
to now I never purged packages the way you described. Would this be
because I manage Debian machines since 1996 (in the days APT was only
a dream....)? :-)
I couldn't say, but a bug is a bug, even if you've never personally
suffered from it.
Hey, people who administer Debian machines for so many years should
bloody know that apt-get is a darn powerful command and that answering
its questions blindly can lead to catastrophes.
Sure. But wouldn't it be better if there were fewer catastrophes?
Think of a car. Cars are darned powerful machines and anyone
should bloody know that careless driving can get you killed.
Even so, cars are designed with
a) Seatbelts,
b) Airbags,
c) Collapsible steering columns
(so you don't impale youself during a collision)
d) Plastic layers in the windshield so that it doesn't turn
into a clouds of flying glass shards in a collision,
e) Collapsible engine compartments so that you decelerate
relatively slowly in a collision,
f) Fuel tanks that are designed not to leak in any reasonable
collision
g) Padded steering wheels and dashboards,
h...z) lots of things that a good automotive engineer could list.
Why do they do this? Because they understand that users make mistakes,
and they understand that a good machine has to protect people from
their own mistakes (to the extent possible). The same principles
apply to software,
If we want to draw some conclusion from this bug report, maybe a
wishlist bug for optionnally removing dependency packages when purging
a given package...not more.
Well, I suppose you're a guy who drives without a seatbelt,
but that'd be better than nothing.
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