Wow, i had already forgotten about this request.
"It is not appropriate to implement features like this within any
particular apt front-end. A separate utility program is acceptable (...)"
I agree, though this utility might later be integrated in Synaptic.
"and that program is deborphan"
I disagree. deborphan's purpose is to find unnecessary libraries. What i
propose is something different.
"As you propose it, most packages requested by the user would be marked
auto-installed and subsequently prone to autoremoval, which is certainly
not desired."
Exactly, that's the whole idea! Right now, when you install a package
with recommendations or dependencies, if you later uninstall that
package some of the dependencies/recommendations (i haven't quite
figured this out yet) are left behind - and deborphan won't spot them. I
am sure of this, and i would like to provide examples, but i can't
remember any right now. In order to remove them, i have to open Synaptic
> Status > Installed (manual) and go through the entire list, marking
packages as "automatically installed". I like to keep a clean system,
and this is annoying. Actually, i have recently come up with a different
strategy: whenever i install something, after marking a package for
install i visit Custom Filters > Marked Changes and mark all other
packages as "automatically installed". If i ever remove that first
package, Synaptic will show me the others under Status > Installed (auto
removable).
Now, let's look at this from a common user's point of view: you ran that
utility at one point; now, after uninstalling an important meta-package
(something like "xfce4"), a whole bunch of them shows up as "auto
removable". No problem. Run the "auto-mark" feature again (just a
suggestion for a name) and it will unmark only the most relevant
packages (the ones without dependants). I can see where this might go
wrong, so we should add the following two conditions to the utility:
- Always consider libraries as auto removable.
- Accept a parameter with a list of exceptions to the above condition,
to help prevent libraries like "libdvdcss2" from being uninstalled.
- A simulation mode, where instead of marking packages, it would only
print/return the packages it would have marked as "manually installed.
I wish i could create this utility myself, but it's been ages since the
last time i programmed in any language other that those for the web, and
i know very little about apt and dpkg.
Regards.
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