RPM Soft dependencies (Was: Re: Agenda for the 2009-05-26 Packaging Committee meeting)

[Mathieu Bridon (bochecha)]

>> > users may not want those features. A soft dependency covers this
>> > situation pretty perfectly; by default you get the extra dependencies
>> > installed so the features will be available, but if you're someone who
>> > needs to optimize disk space or number of installed packages you'll have
>> > configured urpmi not to install soft dependencies so you won't get them,
>> > and if you didn't do that but you later decide to remove one of the soft
>> > deps, you can. I consider this a significant win, the package would be
>> > objectively less good without this.
>>
>> How do you know _later_ which installed packages could be removed as
>> they only came via soft dependencies ?
>>
>> « package-cleanup --soft-leaves » or something like that ?
>
> Is this possible now even with hard dependencies? If I install package A
> that requires B and C, but decide I don't like it so I remove package A,
> B and C still stay on my system.

Then you use « package-cleanup --leaves ».

This will list the packages that were dragged in as dependencies but
on which nothing depend anymore.


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Mathieu Bridon (bochecha)