[NEW IDEA] Automatic removal of dependencies

[seth vidal]

On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 12:46 -0600, Lamont R. Peterson wrote:
> 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.

You could do #3 or #2 as a plugin if you'd like to try it.

I think #1 is unlikely to happen.
-sv