Users have in the past "accidentally" removed entire desktops ("I
installed this package, now my desktop is gone and I can't use my PC
anymore"). They often just hit enter and don't really read what apt is
going to do.aptitude does autoremoval by default in any install/remove/upgrade/etc operation SuggestsImportant was set to true in 2011 with 0.8.15.3. It's been that way for 6 years, 3 LTS releases. I feel like it's a bit late to change that back now. Also, just setting SuggestsImportant to false will not really help - you might still get a different result in your example. Any dependency on a virtual package or an or group will keep _every_ installed package satisfying that dependency installed. So install A depending on B | C | D, install packages needing C and D, remove the latter packages and C and D will still be kept around. So my personal autoremoval script (which based on pseudo boolean optimization to mathematically ensure the smallest possible system based on manually installed + depends + recommends) would currently remove 42 packages, autoremove only 24. In my opinion, for careful people like us, I do agree that the Suggests handling is bad (after all, my script also does not treat Suggests as important). But I don't fully trust normal users with that, given what we've seen in the past with some not reading what apt is going to do and then complain afterwards that their entire desktop was gone. A reasonable compromise here would be to easily give the user the information that they can remove even more packages: * Keep autoremove SuggestsImportant * Add a new option to autoremove and co like --autoremove-more that sets SuggestsImportant to false * When running autoremove, show "The following packages could also be removed, but might enhance other installed packages. Use --autoremove-more to remove them" and a list of packages that are only kept by Suggests (and preferably list which package(s) are suggesting them). Now the enhances might be confusing in the wording, but we eventually want to also have the autoremover respect Enhances, but Enhances is more complicated since it's the other way around. But it does explain the situation. Finally, I'd like to hear what DonKult has to say, given that he turned that on in the first place. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1725861 Title: APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant "false" should be the default To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/1725861/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
