On Wednesday 05 August 2020 12:44:04 pm Slávek Banko wrote: > Dne st 5. srpna 2020 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp napsal(a): > > Anno domini 2020 Wed, 5 Aug 19:29:49 +0200 > > > Metapackages are good at installation, but poor servant during the > > > removal of individual packages. > > > > > > For metapackages to work well for installation, there is a need for a > > > hard dependency - Depends. If a looser dependency - Recomends - were > > > used, the result could be that virtually nothing would be installed > > > when the default apt setting is "without recommends". And here is the > > > beginning of the problem. If a user wants to remove a package that is > > > referenced by a metapackage, this will cause the metapackage to break > > > => leads to its uninstallation and thus to the uninstallation of all > > > other packages referenced by the metapackage. > > > > > > Therefore, before removing a metapackage, all referenced packages need > > > to be switched to "manual" so that they are retained even if the > > > metapackage is removed. This is more difficult to do manually with > > > commands - it's much easier to use aptitude. > > > > How do you do that with aptitude? > > In aptitude you can "enter" the metapackage using the Enter key, move to > depends and then press "m". This will switch all packages in the list > to "manual". > > At the same time, there is an 'overview step' in aptitude before performing > both installation and uninstallation - after pressing 'g'. There it is > possible to notice the situation and make changes in the selection of > packages. Alternatively, go back - by pressing 'q' and continue > selecting / deselecting packages. Thank you Slávek! I've never used aptitude interactively (or even knew you could). That definitely makes life easier. Doesn’t fix my, “I want my cake and eat it too” package thoughts, but that’s mostly from my not understanding how the package management system handles dependencies. If I get it, to do what I want, then tde-trinity (and I guess every other TDE metapackage) would need everything in depends moved to recommends and the install instructions changed to: aptitude install --install-recommends tde-trinity Since that’s not done, there’s more than likely issues doing it that way (besides just messing up legitimate recommends). I’m sure I’m not the first person who wanted to keep the metapackage after removing one of its components. My cake is pretty, my cake is yummy! Why can’t I eat it and have it too? Typical User, Michael --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: trinity-users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: trinity-users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Read list messages on the web archive: http://trinity-users.pearsoncomputing.net/ Please remember not to top-post: http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/mailing_lists/#top-posting
