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this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Hi thanks for your quick response !
I already checked with
apt show emacsand the output clearly showsemacs-gtkas depends on. And while installing the emacs package with:sudo apt-get install emacsit installed a ~400Mo package and all dependencies.So why doesn't
sudo apt remove --purge --autoremove emacsremoves everything ? I thought this command would be the exact opposite ofsudo apt install package-nameAh, I can duplicate this behavior too. I think it is probably related to emacs being a metapackage. It does not include emacs itself but forces the install of emacs-gtk. In my mind removing the metapackage should allow you to autoremove dependencies, but people have broken their systems badly with this behavior so it may have been changed or it’s stuck behind some configuration option.
Removing emacs-gtk itself will work as you expect. You can also install emacs-nox for a cli-only one that is smaller.
Edit: there is a setting called APT::Never-MarkAuto-Sections that by default includes meta packages and I think is the cause of this.
Thank you very much for your enlighten answer :D !
Yes that's what I found out with
apt show emacs-gtk, it shows all the dependencies but I found it quiet odd behavior (lack of knowledge).I wasn't aware of metapackages, something new to put into my knowledge database.
Edit: While writing my replay and searching through the web and my console, even though I wouldn't have had understood it while reading it... It actually tells me in the description that emacs is a metapackage... Bad reading skills :/ sorry about that !
If you don't mind I have a last question. Imagine I want to remove
docker-ce, which depends oniptablesamong others, if Isudo apt remove --purge --autoremove docker-ce, this isn't going to remove iptables and break my system right? Because it's used by other packages, system... I guess, no?I think a more general question would be how can I be sure I not going to fuck my system while removing packages? Maybe I'm to paranoïd and today it's relatively safe to do so, compared to years ago??
Thank you :)
If something else depends on it then it shouldn’t be removed, it’s only removing things that are not used elsewhere.
Usually just reading through the packages it’s listing and double check what it’s doing is enough. If something is removing a ton of gnome and you’re not trying to remove gnome, that would be an issue. If something is trying to remove the kernel (unless it’s an old kernel) or grub that’s also worth digging into. I’ve never run into problems with it, I don’t think it’s common these days.