Well on a vanilla system I still get: # aptitude -s purge debian-el The following packages will be REMOVED: debian-el{p} elpa-debian-el{u}
aptitude show says: Package: elpa-debian-el Version: 37.10 State: installed Automatically installed: yes Package: debian-el Version: 37.10 State: installed Automatically installed: no True, when I installed them I had: APT::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant false; APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant false; APT::Cache::AllVersions false; APT::Clean-Installed false; APT::Default-Release "unstable"; APT::Get::Fix-Missing true; APT::Get::Purge true; APT::Install-Recommends false; APT::Keep-Downloaded-Packages true; APT::Periodic::Enable false; Acquire::PDiffs true; Acquire::http::No-Cache true; Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt true; Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Deps true; Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Why true; Aptitude::CmdLine::Verbose 1; Aptitude::Purge-Unused true; Binary::apt::APT::Keep-Downloaded-Packages true; OK, now doing purge, install, purge again, with my above settings list I get: # aptitude purge debian-el The following packages will be REMOVED: debian-el{p} elpa-debian-el{pu} (D: debian-el) OK, I'll just purge debian-el, and then install elpa-debian-el. OK, now it is not marked Automatically Installed. (I only dare use -s when I don't have my settings list installed, as it might delete all my downloaded packages, etc.)