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Bug#680240: apt-get remove/purge doesn't warn you adequately enough when tagets are dependencies of another package



package: apt-utils
version: all versions of apt-utils stable, testing, unstable, etc

Say package A depends on package B. Now say you go "apt-get remove B". Since A depends on B it will also be removed along with B and apt-get will tell you this.

However I feel that apt-get doesn't tell you clearly enough. It's should be somewhat more like aptitude in behavior only without the interactive dependency resolver. Like it should obviously mention that it will remove all specified targets and packages that depend on these as it does now. However the packages dependant on the targets should be listed in a seperate section that labels them as such.

Like I do carefully monitor apt's output before I enter in that y character. The best package manager is always the human brain. However the human brain does err and the package manager should therefore work together with it to explain as clearly as possible what it's doing so the user can catch themselves if they doing some package management at say 11 PM and aren't at their sharpest.

Like I often apt-get remove packages one at a time. This way if apt-get says it wants to remove several packages I know there's a potential problem. However I and other people shouldn't have to worry about this as much. Like to save time I wish I could enter in several targets at a time and then not going counting putting each in a one to one correspondence with what apt says it will remove.

If there is a problem I simply wish to be notified. It should be that if removing a target on which other packages depend apt would not only say it's removing the target and packages that depend on it but also that it's specifically removing the dependants because they're dependants of a package that will no longer be installed.



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