On Tue, Jul 05, 2005 at 04:03:24PM +0200, Rhialto wrote:
> On Mon 04 Jul 2005 at 19:16:48 -0500, Richard Rauch wrote:
> > old problem that has been discussed a year or more ago: Namely, you
> > install and remove some package, but the dependency packages can linger
> > around---even when you don't want them.  The desire is to, with little or
> 
> How about pkg_delete -R foo ?

Um, you forgot about the case of deleting packages that you specifically
installed (and do NOT want deleted) but which have nothing else depending
on them.  Sorry, I did not re-iterate that requirement above, since the
original statement was only a couple of days ago.  (^&

I gave an example with a fictitious ...pkgsrc/devel/libA being both used
for local development and by ...pkgsrc/games/B.

A more real-world example is TeX, which I use directly for typesetting,
and which is used by doxygen.  If I remove doxygen, I *certainly* do *not*
want TeX to be removed.

pkg_delete -R foo is therefore useless unless I want to re-isntall
stuff that it overzealously deletes.


Todd Vierling, I think, suggested making a meta-pkg  for my system that
contains dependencies on every package that I want to keep.  That's a
pretty good idea, I think.  But because I might have forgotten to add
a package to my meta-pkg list, so pkg_delete -R foo is still not really
ideal.

Along with the meta-pkg idea, a script was included which would find
packages no longer required by other packages.


Without the package system being able to read minds, this may be about
as good as it will get.  (Automatically adding a package to my
"needed' meta-pkg when I directly install the package, and removing it
when I directly ask that the package be removed would be a slight
improvement...but I doubt that it's worth the trouble to add as a
feature for the package system.)


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/