The Wanderer wrote: [dd]
> > The suggestion of 'debfoster', from elsewhere in the thread, seems > reasonable as well. Although that would then mean that debfoster itself > would then be included in the list of base packages, which isn't > necessarily desirable and isn't technically accurate. Of course it's not necessary. Once I know that such a utility exists, I have no problem adding it to the list of packages I install first on any new system (among rsync, lsof, mtree-netbsd, netcat, screen, sockstat, csearch and many others). > > > If on the other hand your real goal is not to achieve package > > reduction, but instead to *complain* about Debian, well, you've > > already achieved it. > > > > If your real goal is not just to complain about Debian, but rather, > > to make Debian *change* something arbitrary, just so that you feel > > powerful, well, good luck with that. > > It seems to me that his goal (aside from finding a way to do the "revert > to pristine state" in his own case) is to persuade people that Debian > should implement, and in fact if possible should already have > implemented, Yes, I kind of expected that this problem had been solved and only my lack of knowledge prevents me from using a well-known solution. > a mechanism to make such a pristine-state reversion > possible in all cases - rather than having it be possible only if the > user took a particular action, which is not clearly documented or > suggested for that point, immediately after install. It is interesting that debfoster "maintains a list of installed packages that were explicitly requested rather than installed as a dependency." As a result, its list of unnecessary packages is rather short even long after the installation. Which is good of course. > > While I'm not particularly happy with the tone of his inquiries either, Sorry if I sounded harsh, this was not my intention (unless I was already facing an unjustifiedly hostile attitude from a couple of people). > and I doubt that I would ever use such a mechanism if it existed, the > basic idea doesn't seem like a particularly unreasonable one. I think > your own pushback against it probably goes too far in its own right. -- Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN 2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/
