[NEW IDEA] Automatic removal of dependencies

[Lamont R. Peterson]

On Thursday 27 April 2006 12:52pm, seth vidal wrote:
> 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 I'll take a crack at it.

> I think #1 is unlikely to happen.

I agree.  I only included it for completeness sake, since it was obvious.  
However, #1 does have the advantage of taking place at the RPM DB level, and 
thus being available to anything built atop the RPM libs, though, it would 
still require awareness in the higher level apps (like yum) to make it 
useable.
-- 
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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