On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 07:05:33AM +0100, Stella Ashburne wrote: > Dearie > > > Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2022 at 10:05 PM > > From: to...@tuxteam.de > > To: debian-user@lists.debian.org > > Subject: Re: Uninstalling a package removes other essential packages: What > > is the best course of action? > > > > > > So why not do your research yourself? > > > Honestly I don't know where to start.
There are, of course, many ways to go about it. And, of course, it has the potential to eat all the time resources available, and then some. So everyone has to choose where to cut :) I'll present one way here, which always reminds me of the incredible gift we have: access to most of the source code for the things we use. For our case (libthai), start with apt. The library package is called libthai0, so (I'm on buster; YMMV): tomas@trotzki:~$ apt rdepends libthai0 libthai0 Reverse Depends: Depends: libthai-dev (= 0.1.28-3) Depends: php-wikidiff2 (>= 0.1.25) Depends: libsombok3 (>= 0.1.12) Depends: scim-thai (>= 0.1.12) Suggests: libqt5core5a Depends: libpango-1.0-0 (>= 0.1.25) Depends: libm17n-0 (>= 0.1.12) Depends: ibus-libthai (>= 0.1.19) Breaks: libthai-data (<< 0.1.10) Depends: gtk-im-libthai (>= 0.1.12) Depends: gtk3-im-libthai (>= 0.1.12) That gives you the "reverse dependencies", i.e. which packages do depend on libthai? Many of those (roughly: those having "im" in their name) are "input methods". Also that ibus- thing. The two dependencies with potential to "spread" are libpango (nearly everything rendering text these days uses that) and libqt5core5a (if you are using Qt applications). Let's have a look at this libpango-1.0-0: tomas@trotzki:~$ apt show libpango-1.0-0 Package: libpango-1.0-0 Version: 1.46.2-3 Priority: optional Section: libs Source: pango1.0 Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers <pkg-gnome-maintain...@lists.alioth.debian.org> Installed-Size: 441 kB Depends: fontconfig (>= 2.1.91), libc6 (>= 2.14), libfribidi0 (>= 1.0.0), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.61.2), libharfbuzz0b (>= 2.1.1), libthai0 (>= 0.1.25) [...] So the source package is pango1.0. You could install the source package and have a look into it, but Debian offers you: https://sources.debian.org/ Enter "pango1.0" into that little box ("by package name"). If you're bold, you can just stick that into the URL https://sources.debian.org/search/pango1.0/ You click on that one URL and there you have the sources, nicely sorted by Debian version. Click on yours (mine is buster). You'll notice that little box on the right labelled "search" (there's also a dropdown: we'll ignore that). It is pre-set with "package:pango1.0". We add to it (separated by a space) "libthai" and click on "search". Now it searches all of pango's sources for occurrences of libthai. I'll leave that here. Explore. Come back with questions. And mind those rabbit holes. Only pick the enjoyable ones :) Cheers -- t
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