[Mageia-dev] Orphans - those poor orphans . . .

Fri Jan 6 20:06:12 CET 2012

On Fri, 6 Jan 2012, Thierry Vignaud wrote:
+
+> On 6 January 2012 15:53, LinuxBSDos.com <finid at linuxbsdos.com> wrote:
+>>> This is a well known issue.
+>>> To clear out the list you need a deep knowledge of the system to
+>>> determine which packages are really not needed anymore.
+>>>
+>>> Lately  this --auto-orphans line shreddered my whole system on a fresh
+>>> install after the first update, several system services could not
+>>> start at next reboot, applications did not run, etc. One of the very
+>>> few times I had to re-install because of a bug. Call me newbie or
+>>> pussy but until this is not a secure function I will never touch it
+>>> again.
+>>
+>> Btw, this problem is not unique to Mageia. After I hosed a Debian
+>> installation by running apt with auto-orphans, I vowed never to mess with
+>> orphans again.
+>>
+>> The system has to be intelligent enough to know what is or is not an orphan.
+>
+> It is.
+> orphan packages are packages that were never directly requested/installed;
+> they're packages that got installed because they were requested or suggested
+> by other packages that were explicitely choosed.
+> Then if you remove the package you explicitely choose, urpmi sees that the
+> packages that were requested by this one are no more required by anything
+> and since you never explicitely requested them, it offer to remove them.
+
+Evidently once I've installed package A which requests X, sometimes packages
+F, L, and T might subsequently get installed which also need X *and presumably
+would have requested it had it not already been installed*.  But when I uninstall
+A it orphans X because A is the only package that *requested* it.  When F, L,
+and T are installed can't all the packages they *would have requested* be marked
+whether or not they're already installed?  That way a package would be orphaned
+only when the last package that needs it is uninstalled?  Or am I missing
+something?
+
+Dale Huckeby
+