pacman -R: -d should not override -s

Gullible Jones · 2005-10-04 02:39:58

Say that you want to remove XOrg and its dependencies, but not stuff that depends on it. So, you try:

pacman -Rsd xorg

But guess what: that just removes XOrg, and none of the dependencies! Okay, I get the idea... -d means skip dependency checks... But -s is specifically telling pacman to remove a package's dependencies. So if someone uses -Rsd, wouldn't it be more prudent for pacman to remove the specified package and its dependencies, but not reverse dependencies?

(Why the complaint? Because I just had to reinstall my entire system after deleting the wrong part o XOrg's dir...)

T-Dawg · 2005-10-04 10:19:23

why would you use -d to -Rs? You have to be smarter than the program, my friend.

Gullible Jones · 2005-10-04 10:39:39

Because -Rs will exit if there are reverse dependencies.

As I said, suppose you wanted to remove XOrg and its dependencies. You could use -Rsc, but that would also remove everything depending on XOrg - so, if you had Gnome installed, Gnome would also get removed. I'm asking for a way to remove a package and its dependencies, without removing things that depend on that package.

phrakture · 2005-10-04 15:20:35

That doesn't make any sense... I get you're probably trying to X11 forward things, or something of the sort. However, it doesn't make sense to be able to remove a package but keep things that depend on it.

Gullible Jones · 2005-10-04 16:26:10

No, under normal circumastances it doesn't. But if you accidentally remove something important, it's the difference between a small setback and several hours wasted on a reinstall.

Case in point: yesterday, I had to reinstall my system because I did 'rm -r' instead of 'ls' on /usr/X11R6/lib - I would have had to reinstall all of X's dependencies as well as X, and I wasn't able to get a list of those dependencies. Removing what remained of X, its dependencies, and its reverse dependencies would have taken even longer than a reinstall.

And while we're at it, aren't you effectively saying that 'pacman -Rd' doesn't make any sense?

cmp · 2005-10-04 17:35:49

why not just use pacman -S xorg ? It should just replace xorg with a new version of itself.

phrakture · 2005-10-04 17:47:48

Gullible Jones wrote:

And while we're at it, aren't you effectively saying that 'pacman -Rd' doesn't make any sense?

I'm not a fan of Rd, actually - admittedly it has it's uses, but if it were up to me, I'd say "too bad". To me that's like adding something like "startx --crash" which, well, crashes... but of course, -Rd is more subtle 8)

cmp · 2005-10-04 18:33:35

well, then --force should be removed, too

Gullible Jones · 2005-10-04 19:06:58

cmp wrote:

why not just use pacman -S xorg ? It should just replace xorg with a new version of itself.

Because other packes install to the directory as xorg - the fonts that it uses, and some other things IIRC.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-10-04 02:39:58

pacman -R: -d should not override -s

#2 2005-10-04 10:19:23

Re: pacman -R: -d should not override -s

#3 2005-10-04 10:39:39

Re: pacman -R: -d should not override -s

#4 2005-10-04 15:20:35

Re: pacman -R: -d should not override -s

#5 2005-10-04 16:26:10

Re: pacman -R: -d should not override -s

#6 2005-10-04 17:35:49

Re: pacman -R: -d should not override -s

#7 2005-10-04 17:47:48

Re: pacman -R: -d should not override -s

#8 2005-10-04 18:33:35

Re: pacman -R: -d should not override -s

#9 2005-10-04 19:06:58

Re: pacman -R: -d should not override -s

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