How shall I report a bug in the .deb packaging itself?

[Alberto Salvia Novella]

Julian Andres Klode:
 > It just happens that some of the newly installed dependencies are also
 > Suggested by other installed packages, and thus are not removed,
 > because you might have installed the package in order to extend the
 > functionality of another installed package suggesting it.

sudo apt-get install cortina -y
sudo apt-get purge cortina -y
sudo apt-get autoremove -y

Result: the recommended dependencies installed only during this 
operation are not removed. Now we have the GNOME Display Manager, and 
also plenty of extra wallpapers, among others.


Ralf Mardorf at <ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com>:
 > autoremove could consider recommended dependencies as automatically
 > installed, but likely already now some users complain that autoremove
 > uninstalls software they still want to use.

So the root cause is in autoremove, not in the package management. Just 
taking one specimen using the above example:
- Installing cortina installs the gnome-shell as dependency
- gnome-shell installs gdm as recommended packages
- gdm installs the gnome-icon-theme as recommended package

So using autoremove without touching the recommended packages will leave 
plenty of stuff there, in a fashion that is costly to trace back.


Ralf Mardorf
 > Already now some users complain that autoremove uninstalls software
 > they still want to use.

I think that if an user wants to install something to stay there, they 
will do explicitly and not through a third package.

More surprising is that the "install" and "remove" buttons do not act on 
the same software.


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