On Fri 24 May 2013 at 07:26:57 -0400, Stephen Allen wrote: > On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 11:11:13AM +0100, Brian wrote: > > > > Well, there is a solution: marking all the dependencies of the > > meta-package as manually installed, that is, faking that you installed > > them explicitly Aptitude is able to do that with its powerful search > > functions: > > > > aptitude unmarkauto '?reverse-depends(gnome) | ?reverse-recommends(gnome)' > > aptitude unmarkauto '?reverse-depends(gnome-core) | > > ?reverse-recommends(gnome-core)' > > aptitude unmarkauto '?reverse-depends(gnome-desktop-environment) | > > ?reverse-recommends(gnome-desktop-environment)' > > > > This works for me to purge Evolution without removing other needed > > software. > > Thanks for your effort to help me, mucho appreciated! In the light of > day the packages it was going to remove were non-essential in the > running of gnome-shell. Note to self: Don't do work late in the day.
I have never used aptitude but thought a command like aptitude unmarkauto '?reverse-depends(gnome) | ?reverse-recommends(gnome)' might appeal; I'm impressed with its succinctness. On the other hand, provided a user is aware that setting packages to manually installed is sensible for his task, it seems using aptitude interactively is very neat and possibly more accessible. Doing the same thing with apt involves a lttle more thought. My paltry attempt is: apt-cache depends --installed gnome | cut -d ':' -f2 | xargs apt-mark manual There might be more tweaking to be done. Glad you solved your problem. > > -- > Cheers, > Stephen, Toronto > My Google+ Profile | http://goo.gl/JbQsq > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org > Archive: > http://lists.debian.org/20130524112657.gb6...@thunkpad.gateway.2wire.net > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130524182530.GE3596@desktop
