[Mageia-dev] Orphans - those poor orphans . . .

[Dale Huckeby]

On Fri, 6 Jan 2012, Thierry Vignaud wrote:

> On 6 January 2012 15:53, LinuxBSDos.com <finid at linuxbsdos.com> wrote:
>>> This is a well known issue.
>>> To clear out the list you need a deep knowledge of the system to
>>> determine which packages are really not needed anymore.
>>>
>>> Lately  this --auto-orphans line shreddered my whole system on a fresh
>>> install after the first update, several system services could not
>>> start at next reboot, applications did not run, etc. One of the very
>>> few times I had to re-install because of a bug. Call me newbie or
>>> pussy but until this is not a secure function I will never touch it
>>> again.
>>
>> Btw, this problem is not unique to Mageia. After I hosed a Debian
>> installation by running apt with auto-orphans, I vowed never to mess with
>> orphans again.
>>
>> The system has to be intelligent enough to know what is or is not an orphan.
>
> It is.
> orphan packages are packages that were never directly requested/installed;
> they're packages that got installed because they were requested or suggested
> by other packages that were explicitely choosed.
> Then if you remove the package you explicitely choose, urpmi sees that the
> packages that were requested by this one are no more required by anything
> and since you never explicitely requested them, it offer to remove them.

Evidently once I've installed package A which requests X, sometimes packages
F, L, and T might subsequently get installed which also need X *and presumably
would have requested it had it not already been installed*.  But when I uninstall
A it orphans X because A is the only package that *requested* it.  When F, L,
and T are installed can't all the packages they *would have requested* be marked
whether or not they're already installed?  That way a package would be orphaned
only when the last package that needs it is uninstalled?  Or am I missing
something?

Dale Huckeby