"apt-get purge" vs. "apt-get remove --purge"

[Marius Gedminas]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 05:55:19PM +0100, Pierre Frenkiel wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jan 2009, Tommy Trussell wrote:
> 
> > I'm not certain what apt-get purge does without any argument, but on
> > my system it suggested some packages I could delete using the apt-get
> > autoremove command.
> 
>    Hi Tommy,
>    Sorry, it seems my post was a little too short:
>    I meant, of course:
>        apt-get purge package_name
>        apt-get remove --purge package_name
>    For me, without argument, they are strictly identical: they do nothing,
>    I suppose that it's because I just ran "apt-get autoremove" 1 hour ago.

apt always suggests packages for autoremoval, no matter what you do.

The manual page says:

       purge
           purge is identical to remove except that packages are removed and
           purged.

I seem to remember times when apt-get didn't have a purge command, and
the only way to purge packages was apt-get remove --purge.  I'm guessing
it remains primarily for backwards-compatibility; for end-users it's
clearly shorter to type 'apt-get purge'.

Marius Gedminas
-- 
/* Halley */

        (Halley's comment.)
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