Debian – compile packages AND keep apt tidy

aptcompilingdebianpackage-management

For the first time in my Linux (Debian) career it seems necessary for me to compile a piece of software myself.

The process of compiling is well described on the project-website. However, there is one thing I don't understand, that keeps me from getting started:

I want to keep my package management (APT) tidy. To compile the project, I need to download a lot of packages (most of them *-dev versions), that I probably wouldn't need, once I finished the compilation.

I don't want to keep those *-dev packages afterwards.

Therefore I wonder if there is a practical way to temporarily install those packages for the compilation-process and afterwards delete them all at once (without having to remember each and every package-name).

Best Answer

If the package happens to be in a debian repo somewhere, you can use build-dep to install the build dependencies and mark those as 'automatically' installed. You can then use autoremove to cleanup those build deps.

apt-get build-dep -o APT::Get::Build-Dep-Automatic=true WhatImBuilding
apt-get autoremove

If whatever you're building doesn't already have a deb package with build deps somewhere, then this technique doesn't work. There is however a debian feature suggestion to add this type of support: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=745769

I suppose you could define a fake package for whatever you're building in a local repo which you manage, and define the build-deps there, allowing the above method to work. That's a bit contrived, though. You can also hand-edit the /var/lib/apt/extended_states file to mark whatever packages you're installing as 'automatic', thus making them eligible for autoremove, but that is probably dangerous.

Related Solutions

Linux – Package management strategy with Pacman

The most likely reason you are seeing packages with pacman -Qe that you don't remember installing is that they were part of a "group" (like base-devel, etc) that you installed.

Side Note: I have personally also been looking for a while to switch a package from "explicit" to "implicit" (and even vice-versa) without reinstalling it, it even taking a package I installed explicitly to get another package working and turn it into a dependency of that package (again without reinstalling).

Debian – How to Remove Group of No Longer Needed Packages

I would suggest using user tags, which is a characteristic of aptitude (apt binary doesn't have this) would help with that. When installing packages add the --add-user-tag option when installing the packages, for example:

sudo aptitude --add-user-tag build-dep-package build-dep package

and to remove them just use:

sudo aptitude remove '?user-tag(build-dep-package)'

You can also remove the tag along the way with --remove-user-tag build-dep-package.

But this pose a problem, what about if the same package has both tags? Well, you just use the and/not conditionals to prevent that from happening:

sudo aptitude remove '?and(?user-tag(build-dep-package),?not(?user-tag(wanted-packages))'

To manipulate several packages with different tags use or:

sudo aptitude remove '?or(?user-tag(build-dep-package),?user-tag(wanted-packages)'

Through this is very useful in the long run, I haven't found a way to list all the current active tags.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – Package management strategy with Pacman

Debian – How to Remove Group of No Longer Needed Packages

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