[NEW IDEA] Automatic removal of dependencies

[Leon]

"Jeff Spaleta" <jspaleta at gmail.com> writes:

> On 4/22/06, Mark Rosenstand <mark at borkware.net> wrote:
>> Of course this is where the "explicitly installed" attribute is useful.
>> I assume glibc, grub, udev etc. are all explicitly installed by
>> anaconda.
>
> The smallest group of packages which you can be sure were explicitly
> installed are the mandatory members of the "Core" group in the
> comps.xml file for Fedora Core.  Since Fedora's installer has the
> ability to use kickstart for highly customized installs, you can not
> be reasonable sure that any other specific package will be
> "explicitly" installed.  My vixie-cron example illustrates that
> problem. vixie-cron is a mamber of the "Base" group which kickstart
> installs may or may not use so some installs may not "explicitly" ask
> vixie-cron to be installed and it may be pulled in by sysstat. Or it
> maybe explicitly removed at some later day and then pulled in by a
> sysstat install. "explicit" dependancy marking is an unreliable
> measure of how actively that dependacy is being used on the system and
> can not be the basis of a robust automatic dependancy removal process.
>
> I have no problem with a set of tools that help admins review leaf
> nodes in their packageset. But I have concern for any tool that offers
> to automatically remove leaf nodes...based solely on information which
> can be tracked by the package management system..  I firmly belief
> that leaf node removal requires active human review and the process
> should not be condensed into a set of simplified y/n/cancel dialogs.  
> Things like how frequently/recently the files associated with the
> package have been accessed by un-dependant executables and libraries
> (excluding prelink) are important factors to consider.. factors which
> live outside the available package management information.
>
> -jef

Completely agree with your concern. I post this only from the
perspective of end users. It's likely to have many obsolete libraries
installed when upgrading system from release to release without fresh
install.

Anyway this is not a critical feature.

-- 
Leon