What about an update? It looks like apt-get autoremove indeed removes it now, but qubes updater doesn’t call autoremove automatically. Should it for Whonix?
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For autoremove we have documentation.
Automating bare “apt autoremove” will probably break some system because some users uninstall packages which then removes the meta package which then would result in essential packages getting removed.
(Nowadays users should use dummy-dependency instead.)
Should autoremove remain a manual action since it is quite unexpected?
We’re likely able to provide a safe wrapper that checks if a meta package is installed prior running autoremove.
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Does dist-upgrade from Whonix 17 include autoremove step? If so, probably not a big deal at this point (Whonix 18 not released as stable yet, and a new build will not have those packages anymore).
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No.
I expected automatic autoremove to be perceived as intrusive and unexpected for advanced users. Breaking somewhat the flow of information, consent and might cause confusion.
It might autoremove packages from (third-party) repositories being no longer available.
But this is open for reconsideration because this has never been explicitly discussed.
I guess if it was documented that autoremove happens during release upgrade, that may be acceptable.
Even automatic autoremove as part of “upgrade-nonroot” [1] may be acceptable.
And/or systemcheck could advice to perform autoremove
[1]
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I’ve seen (and lived through) enough horror stories of autoremove completely destroying an operating system that I’m a bit leery of doing it automatically.
What might be possible is to simulate an autoremove, make upgradecheck notify about packages that can be automatically removed, then perhaps make upgrade-nonroot display offer an autoremove to the user after updates are installed. Then they can read through and decide for themselves whether they think it’s safe or not.
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