How to clean up unnecessary dependencies?

[Derek Broughton]

Simon Rönnqvist wrote:

> When installing packages in Kubuntu/Ubuntu or Debian the packages usually
> also want dependencies to be installed. When removing these packages again
> they don't seem to care about a bunch of dependencies being left
> installed. Is there a way to easily clean up unnecessary dependencies?

As people have said, you'll need deborphan to clean up the existing
situation - and for some time in the future.
> 
> The best way so far that I've been thinking of is to use synaptic to
> install the software, because synaptic keeps track of installation
> history. 

"aptitude" - I'm not sure if this is what synaptic is now using behind the
scenes.

> Still this only gives a list of packages installed at a sertain 
> occation, which means that one will still have to remove them manually one
> by one.

You should never have to remove dependencies manually if they were
_installed_ by aptitude.  The problem is that many packages you have were
probably installed before aptitude.

> The ideal would be if the package managers would keep track of which
> packages were picked by the user and which were installed as dependencies.

I'm not sure if you mean the person who builds the package (it _can't_ be
handled at that level) or the program - like synaptic.  Certainly aptitude
marks packages as being "automatically" if they're only installed to meet a
dependency, and then removes them if nothing depends on them. 
-- 
derek