[packagekit] Auto Installed Packages

[Thomas Wood]

On Thu, 2008-01-31 at 19:14 +0000, Richard Hughes wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-01-31 at 13:58 +0000, Thomas Wood wrote:
> > Sounds good, but wouldn't we also need some way to communicate to the
> > front end which packages would be removed so the user can confirm
> > whether this is what they really want?
> 
> I think two things are probably useful to consider:
> 
> * we don't care about software not installed via the package system --
> as soon as we do that we have to communicate a whole lot more detail to
> the user when on general they will not be power users installing from
> source.
> 
> * that deps are packages that are installed almost silently from a users
> point of view, and thus probably are not useful after the original
> software is removed.

I think this is a pretty strong argument, and I'll pass it on to our
team. Personally, I agree with you and that as soon as a user bypasses
the package management system, they take responsibility for applications
breaking. Of course, the only remaining issue is broken feeds/packages,
but then the user is hardly likely to know this.


> 
> > And what about a method to run a clean up operation, with no particular
> > specification on what it does other than do some house keeping in the
> > package management system.
> 
> You mean removing non-required packages? I don't think working through
> all the packages on the system and checking for deps would scale, and
> even if it did, we would need a set of "core" packages like initscripts
> and lsb that could not be removed.
> 
> I've not got any smart ideas. Opinions welcome.

I was really thinking of a more generic cleanup scenario. E.g. a
function to remove cached downloads or compact the install database, or
whatever cleanup features the package system might implement.

Having thought about it though, it really just sounds like a band aid
method to avoid fixing your package management system.

Regards,

Thomas


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