[Deborphan-devel] Bug#742196: deborphan should ignore reverse dependencies on -dbg packages

[Vincent Lefevre]

Package: deborphan
Version: 1.7.28.8
Severity: normal

(This could be seen as a wishlist, but since this problem makes
deborphan partially useless and fail to do what it was designed
for, I've set the severity to normal.)

The main goal of deborphan is to find orphaned library packages,
i.e. packages providing old libraries that could be safely removed
because no packages depend on them any longer. However, if the
corresponding -dbg package has been installed, this no longer
works!

For instance:

$ deborphan
$ apt-get remove libdb5.1 -s
NOTE: This is only a simulation!
      apt-get needs root privileges for real execution.
      Keep also in mind that locking is deactivated,
      so don't depend on the relevance to the real current situation!
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-doc-3.10 linux-image-3.10-3-amd64
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libdb5.1 libdb5.1-dbg
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 5 not upgraded.
Remv libdb5.1-dbg [5.1.29-7]
Remv libdb5.1 [5.1.29-7]

showing that libdb5.1 can be safely removed (together with the
associated -dbg package).

IMHO, dependencies of -dbg packages should be ignored.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.13-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=POSIX, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages deborphan depends on:
ii  libc6  2.18-4

Versions of packages deborphan recommends:
ii  apt           0.9.16.1
ii  dialog        1.2-20140219-1
ii  gettext-base  0.18.3.2-1

deborphan suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information