APT Is Nagging Me To Remove Things I Don't Want To Remove

[Nigel Ridley]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
> 
>> On Saturday 26 January 2008, Nigel Ridley wrote:
>>> So it would seem that all one needs to do is manually install the
>>> packages that apt wants you to autoremove (without needing to
>>> uninstall/remove them first)
>> Quite so.
>>
>>> - you can highlight the entire list in the
>>> consol window, type 'sudo apt-get install ' (with the added space) and
>>> then middle mouse button to paste the entire list, then hit enter.
>> You can, sure.  I operate with the idea that I want to set as little as
>> possible to manual installed, because it helps with cruft problems later
>> on during upgrades, but this isn't a big deal.
> 
> But on that note, I'd point out that Nigel almost certainly did _not_ need
> the lib* packages he just manually installed.  
> 
> lib packages regularly become outdated, because it is often necessary to
> have a libthing1 and a libthing2 package to support different versions
> (binary interfaces) of programs that depend on "thing".  
> 
> For instance we have:
> 
> wotsit - depends thing > 1.5 < 2.0
> whosit - depends thing >= 2.0
> thing - depends libthing
> 
> So we get: libthing1 & libthing2 which are binary incompatible versions of
> the same libthing package, and you can then have wotsit and whosit
> installed at the same time.  When wotsit gets updated to use thing 2.0 and
> libthing2, libthing1 will become eligible for autoremoval.
> 
> One of the big clues is that any lib*N package, where N is an integer that's
> actually part of the package name and not part of the version, is likely
> safe to remove if apt says so (but looking to see if you have some other
> package with the same name, except for the integer suffix, would be
> advisable :-) )

That's all well and good - but how am I to *know* that I don't need such 
and such lib - trust apt - when it wants to remove the gimp, which I 
know that I do need and use?
It's OK if one is familiar with the system and understands differing lib 
versions but what about the like of us that are just wanting to trust 
the package manager?

Yours a little peeved...

Nigel

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