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

Sat Jan 7 08:48:43 CET 2012

Op vrijdag 06 januari 2012 13:02:26 schreef Thierry Vignaud:
+> On 6 January 2012 12:27, Wolfgang Bornath <molch.b at googlemail.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.
+> 
+> This is just a bogus claim:
+> If some apps break after removing orphan packages, they'll break too
+> after manually removing such packages, meaning they lack some
+> requires...
+
+perhaps, to instill more confidence, we could:
+
+- have only list the leaf orphans; which means of course, you can do it 
+multiple times, or maybe --recursive to give them all
+- not to list in orphan list packages which don't contain any files: ie, tasks
+- mention clearly that if they want to use some package, that they can install 
+it
+- list separately and sorted the ones with changed access times? as in, they 
+have been used since install? (unless partition is mounted noatime, of 
+course... /o\
+
+personally, orphans can break packages, but basesystem and basesystem-minimal 
+should both not be removed, perhaps we can even put on a warning if those are 
+not installed; when running --auto-orphans.
+
+perhaps a combination of these options could instill more confidence... but... 
+is it worth it???
+