[Distutils] PEP 376 -- new round

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Carl Meyer <carl at dirtcircle.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
>
> Reinout van Rees wrote:
>> Debian/ubuntu has a mechanism to clean up packages that were once
>> installed to satisfy dependencies but that aren't needed anymore.
>>
>> The handiest course of action is probably looking up how they do it.
>> (/me doesn't know now it works internally, btw)
>
> Apt has a file, /var/lib/apt/extended_states, which stores an
> "Auto-Installed" flag with same semantics as the REQUESTED flag
> (inverted). Though there are issues with the flag not being set
> correctly for base-system packages, and not all tools take advantage of
> the flag, the stored metadata is the same.
>
> Carl

FYI  we agreed with Carl on IRC that he would work on a diff for the
REQUESTED section,
to build a small Rationale chapter. So the need becomes more obvious
from Distutils PoV

Tarek