[NEW IDEA] Automatic removal of dependencies

[Lamont R. Peterson]

All,

Here are a couple of suggestions of how add auto-no-longer-used-dependency 
removal to yum.

1.  Enhance RPM to track a new flag from each package to indicate whether or 
not it was installed auto-selected-for-dependency.  Then, "yum remove foo" 
could automatically select to remove all packages that "foo" depends on that 
are no longer depended on by any other installed packages.

2.  Take what we have with "yum deplist" and create a new command 
("removedeps" ?) that automatically adds those packages that are no longer 
depended on by anything else that is installed, to the list of packages to 
remove.

3.  Same as 2, but integrate the ability into the existing "yum remove" 
command.  When packages are found that qualify for 
auto-inclusion-for-removal, list them and make the question take 3 possible 
answers: y/a/N (yes, auto/all, no).  If you pick "a", then you get the whole 
smash.  If you pick "y", you get the exact same behavior we have today and 
you do not remove those auto-no-longer-used-dependency packages.  If you pick 
"n" (the default if you hit enter), you get the same behavior we have today, 
which is to bail out.

Comments?
-- 
Lamont R. Peterson <lamont at gurulabs.com>
Senior Instructor
Guru Labs, L.C. [ http://www.GuruLabs.com/ ]
GPG Key fingerprint: F98C E31A 5C4C 834A BCAB  8CB3 F980 6C97 DC0D D409
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