I don’t use Xarchiver. It is inadequate for creating password-protected 7-Zip files in Thunar using thunar-archive-plugin. I use and prefer file-roller instead.
However, for some reason when I do apt remove xarchiver, whonix forces me to uninstall some core whonix packages.
I see I can apt-mark hold whonix_dev_package_name, but that’s cumbersome. Is there a better way to do this? Why is Xarchiver forcibly linked to other whonix packages when there’s other alternatives the user may want to use like ark or file-roller? (Or even PeaZip.)
That page explains is generically for any package which is affected by this. xarchiver is part of a meta package (kicksecure-desktop-applications-xfce). Also not easy to uninstall other applications which such as xchat, keepassxc, vlc and others (dependency of whonix-workstation-packages-recommended-gui).
Debian packages support only Recommends: or Depends:. There is nothing in the middle. The missing feature is:
Weak-Depends: list of packages that gets installed when using apt --no-install-recommends but any package listed there can be removed without removing the package which referenced the Weak-Depends: