Removing Open Office Without Removing the Ubuntu Desktop?

[Stephen Ryan]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:39:35 +0100 (CET), Brian Durant
<linuxnewbiedk at yahoo.dk> wrote:
>  --- Stephen Ryan <taketwoaspirin at gmail.com> skrev:
> > On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 08:30:44 +0100 (CET), Brian
> > Durant
> > <linuxnewbiedk at yahoo.dk> wrote:
> > > Sounds good. Anywhere I can get more info about
> > how to
> > > generate an equivalent dummy packeage? Newbie
> > alert
> > > :-)
> >
> > I can try.  To start, you'll need the equivs program
> > installed, either
> > from Synaptic or by apt-get at the command line.
> > $ sudo apt-get install equivs
> >
> > Equivs can be used to make dummy packages for a
> > number of different
> > reasons; for your purposes, you need to pretend that
> > the
> > openoffice.org packages are installed, so the dummy
> > package should
> > look like one of the real openoffice.org packages.
> > To do this, equivs
> > needs a control file listing the appropriate
> > packages that it should
> > be substituting for.
> >
> > =====
> > Section: editors
> > Package: oo-dummy
> > Provides: openoffice.org, openoffice.org-help-en,
> > openoffice.org-hyphenation-en-gb,
> > openoffice.org-hyphenation-en-us,
> > openoffice.org-mimelnk
> > Description: Dummy package for openoffice.org
> >   This dummy package satisfies dependencies for
> > openoffice.org, so
> >   you can use a locally installed copy of StarOffice
> > instead, for example.
> > =====
> >
> > Save this as "oo-dummy.control".  Now run
> > equivs-build to actually
> > create the package.
> > Open a terminal window and type:
> > $ equivs-build oo-dummy.control
> >
> > This prints out a bunch of stuff, which ends in a
> > message about it
> > creating a package file named oo-dummy_1.0_all.deb
> > in the current
> > directory.  Install this package; since it isn't
> > part of the Ubuntu
> > repository, you'll have to install it by hand.
> >
> > $ sudo dpkg -i oo-dummy_1.0_all.deb
> >
> > You should now be free to remove the openoffice.org
> > packages without
> > affecting ubuntu-desktop.  Fair warning: while I did
> > try removing one
> > of the hyphenation packages, I didn't try a full
> > openoffice.org
> > removal.  Also, if there is anything that actually
> > depends on
> > openoffice.org for functionality (as opposed to
> > ubuntu-desktop, where
> > the dependency is solely to make installations and
> > upgrades easier),
> > the dummy package won't help.  I've put a copy of
> > the control file and
> > a copy of the resulting oo-dummy_1.0_all.deb on my
> > website at
> > http://sryan.stearns.org/~sryan/ if that helps you
> > any.
> 
> Many thanks. It seems to have worked fine, though I
> did get a message about dependencies involved with
> removing  openoffice.org-debian-files. I don't know,
> is that a problem??? Also, I am not really clear about
> how you created this "oo-dummy.control" file.

I'm assuming that you really want to remove all of openoffice.org; in
that case, you should just remove all packages whose name starts with
openoffice, including openoffice.org-debian-files.

As for creating the oo-dummy.control file, I started in
/usr/share/doc/equivs/examples/, where there are several example
control files for various purposes.  The webserver one is an example
file for the same purpose, so used the same format for oo-dummy.  The
section I copied from openoffice.org's section, just for consistency. 
The package name can be arbitrary, but I picked something that would
hopefully be somewhat easy to remember why it's there, without
conflicting with any real packages.  The Provides: line I got by
looking at the dependencies of ubuntu-desktop and scanning for entries
that started with "openoffice".  Essentially, an entry in "Provides:"
satisfies the requirements of the corresponding "Depends:" line in
ubuntu-desktop, so the names just have to match.   The Description:
part is multiple lines, and is just so that you can remember what it's
for when you're poking around next year and forgot why it's there :-)