Re: package.el dependencies

[Thierry Volpiatto]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

>> 1) Prevent (or warn) deleting a package if it is already used by another
>> package as dependency.
>
> That'd be nice.

Ok, just need to run a predicate before deinstalling.

>> 2) Store a list of packages installed explicitely (not as dependency)
>> and provide an autoremove function such as apt-get autoremove.
>
> I already asked for help writing that (not much luck so far, tho), so
> yes, that'd be very welcome,

If I find the time I could do that in next weeks.
The problem is we need to feed an alist of packages explicitely
installed with their dependencies, so of course all packages installed
prior this change will have to be reinstalled.

The alist would looks like this:

(setq packages-installed-explicitely
      '((foo . (a b c d h))
        (bar . (b d e))
        (baz . (e f g))))
where a b c... are dependencies.

when deinstalling e.g foo, the starting list of dependencies to add to
the package autoremove list is (a b c d h), then looping in
packages-installed-explicitely and removing the packages used as
dependencies (and directly installed of course) would end in a final
list like (a c h).

-- 
Thierry
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