Package: aptitude Version: 0.6.9.1-1 # aptitude -o APT::Install-Recommends=true install alsa-utils The following NEW packages will be installed: alsa-base{a} (R: alsa-utils) (for alsa-utils) alsa-utils # aptitude -o APT::Install-Recommends=true purge alsa-utils The following packages will be REMOVED: alsa-utils{p}
Maybe it's because the two mutually recommend each other. Anyway here's my conf settings APT::Default-Release "experimental";//just order them in sources.list UNTRUE APT::Cache::AllVersions false; APT::Clean-Installed false; APT::Get::Purge true; APT::Install-Recommends false; Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt true; Aptitude::Purge-Unused true; Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Why true;//511...@bugs.debian.org Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Deps true;//587...@bugs.debian.org No amount fiddling # aptitude -o APT::Install-Recommends=true -o Apt::AutoRemove::InstallRecommends=true purge alsa-utils The following packages will be REMOVED: alsa-utils{p} helps. P.S. the man page says -R, --without-recommends Do not treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages (this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and ~/.aptitude/config). Packages previously installed due to recommendations will not be removed. This corresponds to the pair of configuration options Apt::Install-Recommends and Apt::AutoRemove::InstallRecommends. -r, --with-recommends Treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages (this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and ~/.aptitude/config). This corresponds to the configuration option Apt::Install-Recommends But then oddly doesn't explain why Apt::AutoRemove::InstallRecommends is not affected by the latter. Also when you say 'corresponds' you should say if it corresponds to setting them false or true. Same with all the others on the man page. P.S. reading file:///usr/share/doc/aptitude/html/en/ch02s02s06.html Managing automatically installed packages it seems like my assumptions in line with what it says... so something is wrong. Anyway please tell me how I can now clean up all the aptitude search ~M packages that even deborphan --guess-all can't detect shouldn't still be there. OK I have an idea, I set up a batch simple job: aptitude search ~M to get their names, and then for each one do aptitude why. And then if grep can only find the words Recommends etc. and not Depends, then I probably want to purge it so it is put in the final list. Then after my batch job has made the list, I do set `cat list`; for i do aptitude purge $i; done to interactively see if I want to purge each one. And hope the bug gets fixed so I don't ever have to do that manually again. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org