[Bug 1800610] Re: [SRU] minimize number of manually installed packages

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

** Branch linked: lp:~juliank/livecd-rootfs/minimize-manual-bionic

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1800610

Title:
  [SRU] minimize number of manually installed packages

Status in livecd-rootfs package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in livecd-rootfs source package in Xenial:
  New
Status in livecd-rootfs source package in Bionic:
  In Progress

Bug description:
  [Impact]
  Releases prior to cosmic mark almost all packages manually installed, meaning that obsolete packages are not autoremoved when they should. We fixed this in cosmic, in trunk r1695, by including a new script that marks as automatically installed all dependencies of manually-installed metapackages.

  [Test case]
  Run a build and check in the log that some packages are visited by the script in more than one iterations. 

  [Regression potential]
  First of all, this does not change existing installations; only new ones. The change can cause packages to be autoremoved that were not autoremoved before after performing a package management operation, or dependency change in packages.

  The change is essentially safe: Since we only mark dependencies of
  packages in the section "metapackages", and since those receive
  special treatment by apt:

  1. removal due to dependencies/conflicts: the manual bit transfers from the meta to its deps
  2. explicit removal (apt remove meta): meta and its dependencies are removed

  It is not possible to accidentally uninstall the entire metapackage
  with its dependencies.

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