On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Chris McClimans <ubuntu-devel-disc...@hippiehacker.org> wrote: > Why does autoremoving the ubuntu-virt-mgmt metapackage fail to remove any > dependencies, while autoremoving the virt-manager package works as expected? > > Is there a difference in the way that metapackages are processed vs normal > packages?
Think of a meta-package as a grocery list. Think of a normal package as the ingredients. With the grocery list you can add and remove anything you want and some things aren't explicitly required and might even get removed later... but with the ingredients, everything is required and if you remove one ingredient you might as well remove the rest because it's just not going to taste right. That doesn't mean there aren't optional ingredients though, those are just recommends ;) > I looked at the debian/control on the source for both of them but didn't see > anything out of the ordinary. There are a few different things, the install size should be blank and debian/rules should be a bit different. > > If they are treated differently, I'd like to know how to create a > hybrid-metapackage. > When a hybrid-metapackage is autoremoved, it's dependencies should be > removed with it. You can force apt (well I don't know if this is still the case though) by adjusting /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/*autoremove and removing meta-packages from the list of never auto-mark but that is pretty dangerous, if you decide to remove a required from ubuntu-desktop that isn't a requirement at all and probably just a bloat-package that is useful to some then you end up removing it all. I guess you could have the meta-package trigger on uninstall and do an extra dpkg uninstall though I don't know if that would even work, I've never actually tried sorcery like that. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
