Re: Installation of Recommends by default on October 1st

[Michael Vogt <mvogt@acm.org>]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 02:40:13PM -0700, Matt Taggart wrote:
> Michael Vogt writes...
> 
> > Sorry, I did not explain that properly in my mail.
> 
> Thanks for the good explanation, I understand and agree with the rationale 
> now.

Thanks, I noticed that the mail caused some confusion that a better
explaination from my side could have avoided. 
 
> This policy still might result in people's systems accumulating recommends 
> over time, but I guess that's a problem for deborphan/debfoster and 
> aptitude's --purge-unused feature to solve.

The new automatic dependency information in apt helps here, I
mentioned that on debian-devel already, basicly you can get the
packages on your system that got installed as recommends with the
following command:

# apt-get autoremove -o APT::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant=false

this is of course pretty cryptic, but we can make it more accessible
easily and/or integrate a filter for this in synaptic. 

But my feeling is that it is the same as the regular cruft that builds
up and is now taken care of with the automatic removal of unused
dependencies (kudos to daniel burrows!). If a package is automatically
installed (as part of a dependency) and no other package uses it
anymore, it will be suggested now for autoamtic removal. The same will
happen if no package recommends it anymore.

Cheers,
 Michael