When I installed Debian 2.2r0 a couple of weeks ago, I did the smallest install possible - I let dselect install the default initial set of packages. Over the past couple of weeks, I've done very small tailoring to the system: turned off all network services, switched a few programs (for instance, purged nvi and installed vim), and updated to the most recent security fixes. This weekend I'm planning on doing a lot of work to the system. I'd like to have a fairly minimal system - only those apps that are absolutely necessary, and little else.
To that end, I'm going to be wandering through dselect quite frequently (apt-get is more powerful, but dselect provides a better overview of what is installed and what isn't). One thing that I've noticed about dselect is that if you mark a package (say, marking an installed package for "purge"), dselect remembers that setting even if you don't go through the process of actually removing that package. That caused me some consternation one evening when I somehow accidentally marked a dozen or so packages for uninstall that I really wanted to leave alone. Is it possible to rebuild the installed package list so that it reflects the actual status of the packages installed, rather than what you last marked them as?
