You are not logged in.
Anyone know if there is a way to manually specify a reason for installing a package? If not, I think this would be a neat idea.
The problem I have:
I will install a package, X, for some obscure reason e.g. building a software package manually. Time will pass and I will forget why I had package X installed. When I go to clean my system of unneeded packages, I'll look at package X and wonder if I should uninstall it.
In this scenario, it would be cool if at the time I installed that package, I could type out a reason for installing the package e.g. "KDE dev dependency". This reason would be custom and more detailed than just saying "explicitly installed" or "installed as a dependency". Of course I could just make a text file and keep track there but it would be cool if pacman would track it for me.
What do you think?
Offline
pacman has not such feature. The reason can be set only to “dependency” (--asdeps) or “explicit” (--asexplicit).
The closest you can get with the current version of pacman is creating a metapackage (e.g. named kde-dev-deps) with your packages as dependencies (`depends` array). You can then see a package among its dependencies. That’s inconvenient, though. Both for installing and removing packages.
Sometimes I seem a bit harsh — don’t get offended too easily!
Offline
The meta package idea is interesting. I think I'll stick with that for now.
Offline
As an alternative, you can just periodically review what's installed. First, remove any orphans (covered in wiki), then get a list of explicitly installed packages that are not required by any other packages. Every item on this list should be something you explicitly want / use - you shouldn't need to know *why* it was installed: if you don't still use it, then why it was installed is irrelevant, remove it.
Last edited by Trilby (2024-02-28 20:40:52)
"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" - Richard Stallman
Offline
Yea, that's basically how I was currently handling the situation. But for things like developing KDE applications, I could easily see myself looking at a package and thinking it's okay to remove, but it's actually a build requirement for an application which might not be so easy to reinstall depending the time between when I removed the package and when it was needed again.
Offline
Why would this be a concern? When you rebuild the package that requires it, makepkg will pull in any build time dependencies automatically.
"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" - Richard Stallman
Offline
I wouldn't be using makepkg to build the KDE application. I am using kdesrc-build. I suppose I don't have to use this tool though. I was following the guide on their wiki
Offline