Arch Linux

jko

Member

Registered: 2005-07-23

Posts: 25

pacman -Q --orphans

$ pacman -Q --orphans

Isn't the term "orphans" quite misleading? Doesn't it actually show
"parents"?   I'd expect it to show all packages on which no other
packages depend on and which have no dependencies on other packages
that were not installed explicitly.

However, I'm looking for a way to find the "real orphans". e.g.:

$ pacman -S kdebase

Installs (among others) Qt. When issuing

$ pacman -R kdebase

Qt would still remain on my system, right? Is there a way to detect
these orphans?

Mind you: If I'd install kdebase implicitly via, e.g.,

$ pacman -S kdegames

then kdebase should be considered an orphan, too. If I'd do

$ pacman -S kdebase
$ pacman -S kdegames

then only the underlying packages (qt, kdelibs) should be considered
orphans.  Is there a way to do this?

Cheers

solskogen

Member

From: Norway

Registered: 2005-03-06

Posts: 121

Re: pacman -Q --orphans

If you install KDE with "pacman -S kde", remove KDE with "pacman -Rsc kde" - it will kill all orphans.

dtw

Forum Fellow

From: UK

Registered: 2004-08-03

Posts: 4,439

Website

Re: pacman -Q --orphans

I'll be a bit more specific for clarification:

if you install say k3b, with pacman;

[~] : sudo pacman -S k3b

Targets: kde-common-3.4.1-1 jack-audio-connection-kit-0.100.0-1 arts-1.4.1-1
         jasper-1.701.0-2 kdelibs-3.4.1-2 k3b-0.12.2-1

· pacman -R k3b will not remove the installed dependencies.
· pacman -Rs k3b will remove the installed dependencies provide you have nothing else installed since that depends on them.
· pacman -Rc k3b will remove anything that depends on k3b

So, if you remove k3b without using -Rs I think the dependency tree is broken and the deps cannot be easily removed as they are not listed in pacman -Qe

However, I just checked, and if you uninstall k3b with -R you can reinstall it with -S - this recreates the dependency tree and then you can remove everything correctly with -Rs k3b

That has actually helped me cos it just uncovered some deps i missed when i removed kde this am!

HTH :mrgreen:

paranoos

Member

From: thornhill.on.ca

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 442

Re: pacman -Q --orphans

the only way i've found "real" orphans is by searching pacman for packages that were installed as a dependency, but have no packages requiring them.

i don't think pacman has a way to search for this, so i've had to do it manually

unfortunately as well, i installed arch long before the "installed explicitly / as a dependency" flag was added to pacman, so all old packages think they were installed explicitly.

anyway, i think the orphan search should be redefined to show packages installed as a dependency, but no longer are required by anything else. and perhaps adding a Remove orphans flag as well.

this sounds like a job for flyspray... care to write it up, dibble? or shall i?