RFC: A new approach to autoremoval

[Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org>]

Hi all,

I'd like to make a few changes to how autoremoval works. Some
of that has been discussed on IRC, but I think I have now reached
a proposal that is coherent as a whole.

# Automatic autoremoval

Operations such as install, dist-upgrade, remove should automatically
remove unused packages, especially kernels [1]. This works similar
to how --auto-remove works now, but is restricted to a safer subset.
A package qualifies for safe autoremoval if:

(1) It is in a section marked as APT::SafeAutoRemove. 

    The sections enabled by default are oldlibs and kernel.

(2) It became unused as part of the command being run.

    This is consistent with unattended-upgrade's Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-New-Unused-Dependencies
    option, which is enabled by default, and is generally the way higher-level tools are
    migrating to.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1734104

# Harder autoremove command

If we enable safe autoremovals like that, we can make the autoremove
command perform a harder autoremoval, essentially behaving with
Suggests-Important set to false [2].

[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1725861


# Summary

Normal install commands will do a good job of cleaning up after themselves,
and autoremove becomes a bit more thorough.


-- 
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