[TAG] removing unwanted packages

[Thomas Adam]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 02:54:47PM +0200, Karl-Heinz Herrmann wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 12:39:35 +0100
> One question is left so: If System A and system B differ in selected
> packages, I run the --get-selection on A, hand-prune that list and
> rund the "apt-get dselect-upgrade" -- will it only select missing
> packages or does it deselect and uninstall installed packages on B
> because I set the selections to the ones on A?

The "--get-selections" list will contain all of base+standard, as well
as any additional packages you might install, so for a large percentage
of packages in that selection, will already be present on both systems,
anyway.

You can edit the list all you like before you run "dselect upgrade" on
System B - the effect it will have is that if you happen to remove any
dependencies of a package, they'll get installed anyway.  But by all
means trim it down to suit your tastes.

> I would be looking for the first variant, i.e. adding all missing
> packages but not deselecting any. I don't wan't exact clones, but
> ensure that if I log on any machine I always find a basic selections
> of programs and tools without having to ssh around all the time.

Then that is certainly one way of doing it, yes. The other option is to
create a file for "tasksel" to read.  "Tasksel" is/can be used during a
Debian installation to select a "suite" of packages to install -- much
like SuSE offers via YaST.  Of course, after a base install, one can
still run tasksel, and install packages that way.

There's plenty of information about it in:

/usr/share/doc/tasksel/README

and a sample format file:

/usr/share/tasksel/debian-tasks.desc

-- Thomas Adam

--  
"One of us is a cigar stand, and one of us is a lovely blue incandescent
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