Synaptic / Apt: Check for unused packages?

[Florian Diesch]

Chanchao <custom at freenet.de> wrote:

> I was doing a dist-upgrade of an older machine from Breezy to Dapper
> yesterday (won't be doing that again. :) and I noticed a lot of older
> packages/libraries were actually being re-installed.  The one that I
> noticed was GStreamer 0.8, where the current version is 0.10.   The only
> reason I noticed this is because I have the experience with the
> GStreamer version numbers because of messing around trying to get
> RestrictedFormats to work.  But who knows what else is on there double,
> what older packages might be still around..
>
> So, is there a way to use apt / Synaptic to check for packages /
> libraries that are no longer used by anything?  


,----[ ~/bin/pkgdesc deborphan ]
| Package: deborphan
| Description: Find orphaned libraries
|  deborphan finds "orphaned" packages on your system.
|  It determines which packages have no other packages
|  depending on their installation, and shows you a list of
|  these packages. It is most useful when finding libraries,
|  but it can be used on packages in all sections.
`----


,----[ ~/bin/pkgdesc debfoster ]
| Package: debfoster
| Description: Install only wanted Debian packages
|  debfoster is a wrapper program for apt and dpkg.  When first run, it
|  will ask you which of the installed packages you want to keep
|  installed.
|  .
|  After that, it maintains a list of packages that you want to have
|  installed on your system.  It uses this list to detect packages that
|  have been installed only because other packages depended on them.  If
|  one of these dependencies changes, debfoster will take notice, and
|  ask if you want to remove the old package.
|  .
|  This helps you to maintain a clean Debian install, without old
|  (mainly library) packages lying around that aren't used any more.
`----


If you have deborphan installed you can define a filter for synaptic
using the "orphaned" state.


> Does apt even
> distinguish between applications and libraries?  I think it should,
> because otherwise there would be no way to tell what is a top level
> application and what is a library.  For sure when nothing else depends
> on a library then it can be removed. 

No. Some libs (e.g. GStreamer plugins) are used if they are there but
nothing depends on them.




   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/>