Trisquel seems to having a lot of orphanaged packages, sepecially after a fresh install.
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I have recently installed Trisquel 6.0.1 on a Desktop. After Installation I upgraded the whole system from Terminal via $apt-get update and $apt-get dist-upgrade commands.
After this I gave $apt-get autoremove, a command usually used to remove packages which have no dependancy with any other installed package. To my surprise, a list consisting of somewhat between 10-25 packages seemed to be having no dependancies with any of installed packages(or orphanaged packages).
Is it safe to remove these orphanaged packages? How do the community looks at this issue?
I have earlier used Debian, but never faced the issue with orphanaged packages with it. It seems that package dependencies were not fully resolved while developing packages from Ubuntu main repos.
"After this I gave $apt-get autoremove, a command usually used to remove packages which have no dependancy with any other installed package."
I have packages that meet this criteria on my system but I want those packages and use them on a regular basis. So not having a dependency on another package isn't necessarily a useful way to determine if the package in question is actually needed or not.
"Is it safe to remove these orphanaged packages?"
I would say that it depends on what those packages are for and if you want the stuff that they do.
autoremove removes the *automatically installed* packages that are not depended on by any other package. For example, if you install package A along with package B (as a dependency of A), and later remove A, autoremove will try to remove B.
So basically, autoremove removes packages that were installed as dependancies but are no longer necessary.
It also works to remove packages I've installed because they're not depended on by anything else. So it's not perfect.
No it doesn't. It only removes those that were previously installed as a dependency of another package, but no longer are depended on by any package. If you install a package not as a dependency of another package, autoremove won't remove it.
Anyway, the thing that matters you should always look through the list and see if you really want to remove the packages, because you might still want to keep something.
"No it doesn't. It only removes those that were previously installed as a dependency of another package, but no longer are depended on by any package. If you install a package not as a dependency of another package, autoremove won't remove it."
If you say. That doesn't match my experience though. I became tired of always re-installing it and put the packages on hold to prevent their removal.
"Anyway, the thing that matters you should always look through the list and see if you really want to remove the packages, because you might still want to keep something."
Which was precisely my original message. Thanks for confirming that.
I was basically restating what's in the manpage (which is more concise):
"autoremove is used to remove packages that were automatically installed to satisfy dependencies for other packages and are now no longer needed."
If it doesn't behave that way, just report a bug :)
I would suggest there be a mechanism to resolve dependencies when the system is upgraded.
If what Update Manager does is simple apt-get dist-upgrade, chances are that the system will accumulate with unresolved dependencies over the course of time. It would be safe to build a dependency tree, similar to what debian does, before packages are updated so that unresolved dependencies can be removed in the first place.
Maintaining orphanaged packages as pointed out by jxself can be beneficial in one way, but for a stable OS distro like Trisquel, it is always advised to have resolve all dependencies so that the system remains robust.
I recognise some of the orphaned packages after a fresh Trisquel install as stuff Ubiquity uses from looking at its source for a bug in 6.0. So I guess i might be stuff it doesn't self remove just in case. Whatever, an apt-get autoremove of them has never given me any problems.
The Update Manager upgrade process last time I used it was again the same as Ubuntu's with modifications to the package lists and deleted all the cruft and orphan packages. I haven't tested the 6.0.1 -> 7.0 upgrade yet, but I don't imagine it'll be any different once bedded in.
apt-get autoremove is to my observations as legimet and the man page says. However, having used first Debian then Ubuntu then Trisquel since around 2001 I have seen something like the situation jxself mentions from using both aptitude and apt-get. I don't know whether it's something like and aptitude install followed by an apt-get remove and autoremove doesn't remove the additional suggests installs cleanly first time or not for certain, but that's what I thought/guessed at the time.
Whatever the real reason, using aptitude with Ubuntu originated packages had so often resulted in dependecy hell for me at the time I moved to just using apt-get and haven't seen the problem since.
I am yet to find a single orphanaged package in Belenos. Such a Wonderful job....!!
Kudos to the team, especially ruben....!!
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