2009/1/18 William Anderson <ne...@well.com>: > Neil Greenwood wrote: >> [snip] >> >> Have a look at http://blog.hanno-stock.de/archives/50 for a few extra >> steps that will mark libraries and dependencies as automatically >> installed (then they get removed when you choose to remove the package >> you originally installed, instead of becoming cruft). > > But Ubuntu et al automatically pick up on orphaned packages and offer > apt-get autoremove to get rid of them, or did I miss a memo somewhere? > > -n > > -- > ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ >
You are correct, but the process you describe to reinstall desired packages after reinstalling Ubuntu loses the list of dependant packages. I.e. If I am running hardy, and apt-get install foo where foo depends on bar, apt-get will install both foo and bar, marking bar as automatically installed. If I then apt-get remove foo both foo and bar get removed (as long as nothing else has been installed after foo that also uses bar). There might be a prompt to remove automatic packages, I can't remember exactly. However, if I don't remove foo, install intrepid and then do dpkg --set-selections < /media/disk/hardy-packages.txt both foo and bar are marked as manually installed (you've just told apt-get to install bar directly since it's included in hardy-packages.txt). If you now apt-get remove foo only foo will get removed. apt-get and dpkg think you still want bar installed, even though nothing is currently using it. Look at the link I included above, and it only puts packages you manually installed into the list of packages passed to dpkg --set-selections. Hopefully this has cleared up any confusion. If not, ask again! Cofion, Neil. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
