On Sun, May 08, 2005 at 01:28:58AM +0200, Daniel Déchelotte wrote: [...] > I think that an history-independent behaviour makes senses for > meta-packages. Let's imagine a "prerm" script for package kde. On running > "apt-get remove kde", the user would see this warning: > > ,--------------------------------------------------------------------. > | Warning: kde is just a meta-package | > +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ > | What do you want to do: | > | 1_ Deinstall the whole KDE subsystem, that is [list of packages] | > | 2_ Only deinstall the kde meta-package, keep KDE packages (as this | > | meta-package occupies only 7 kB and eases future updates, it is | > | recommended to keep it: this is the next choice) | > | 3_ Keep the kde meta-package (abort this deinstallation) | > `--------------------------------------------------------------------' > Default choice would be 2, to match current behaviour. Actual messages > would obviously require further work, but you get the idea. Choice 1 would > have the same consequences whether kde-amusements had been installed before > kde or the other way around.
I think giant meta-packages need to die painful, horrible deaths, and should be replaced with tasks in the task system instead. Then this sort of behavior could be added to tasksel or whatever. Aptitude already handles this pretty well for both tasks and meta-packages. If the automatic installation tracking doesn't work, you can just find the meta-package/task, navigate to its Depends, and hit - or _ while the Depends line is highlighted. That'll remove all of the dependencies. However, it doesn't work so well for "kde" because there are nested meta-packages there, which is just disgusting... -- Society is never going to make any progress until we all learn to pretend to like each other. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
