Bug#559194: Unused automatically installed packages don't get removed on upgrade

[David Kalnischkies <kalnischkies+debian@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 21:10, Uwe Storbeck <uwe@ibr.ch> wrote:
> If you don't want to remove packages with priority "required"
> directly because of stability reasons than maybe resolve the
> problem by policy:
> To remove a required package always add a transitional package
> with reduced priority so that package tools can remove the package
> with standard mechanisms.

policy says about priority required:
"Packages which are necessary for the proper functioning of the system
(usually, this means that dpkg functionality depends on these packages).
Removing a required package may cause your system to become totally
broken and you may not even be able to use dpkg to put things back, so
only do so if you know what you are doing. Systems with only the required
packages are probably unusable, but they do have enough functionality to
allow the sysadmin to boot and install more software." (d-policy §2.5)

And yes, APT never considers required packages as garbage
code is at apt-pkg/depcache.cc in pkgDepCache::Sweep().

I wouldn't consider this a bug in APT and co as its way easier to
break your system than it is useful in helping cleaning up…


Best regards

David Kalnischkies