Useful new package management tool

From: Matthew T. Atkinson (matthew_at_agrip.org.uk)
Date: 03/31/04

  • Next message: Michael Satterwhite: "Loading source files" 
    To: debian-users list <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 19:49:34 +0100

    'ellow,

    I've recently subscribed to this list as I wanted to let you all know
    about a helpful little utility that a friend of mine and I have written.

    It is a Perl script that works out which packages on your system are not
    being used and can be safely removed. This puts an end to the disk
    creep experienced by an often dist-upgraded Debian box.

    The script works out which packages you have installed that no other
    packages depend on. It then takes this list of packages and finds the
    ones whose names begin with ``lib''. These are the packages that are
    most likely to be taking up space un-necessarily and the user is
    recommended to remove them.

    Apt is used to do the actual removals. The use of the --purge option is
    recommended.

    The script also generates a list of the non `libXXX'' packages you have
    installed on your system, but mentions that you may really want to keep
    some of them.

    Because it depends on the information provided by the package
    maintainers, it is guaranteed to work for you (as long as your packages
    have been properly constructed, which is highly likely!) It did find a
    problem on my system -- bittorent didn't depend on libwxgtk2.4 so that
    was un-installed. It was easy to fix, however and I believe the problem
    is sorted out now.

    (If you're a developer who has lots of ``-dev'' packages installed, they
    may be targeted for removal. However, we assume you'd know you needed
    them when you saw the list so you wouldn't choose to remove them.)

    So, this tool can be useful for users and package maintainers. I hope
    you find it useful. You can download it (as well as a few other useful
    scripts) from:

    http://scriptopia.agrip.org.uk/

    Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions for
    improvement. Enjoy!

    bye just now, 

    -- 
Matthew T. Atkinson <matthew@agrip.org.uk>
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