Hi Jimmie,

Jimmie Houchin wrote:
<...>
> It would find every stinking optional works with MySQL package in the 
> 6000+ package Debian system. I would get Perl, Python, Ruby, Scheme, ... 
> and on and on libraries for MySQL. Ugh and yuck.
> 
> This causes/caused a maintainence nightmare. Now I am constantly 
> downloading, updating, and configuring software I didn't select, want, 
> desire or need.
<...>

If you are using aptitude, you can use F10 to get into the menu, then go 
to options / dependency handling. There you can check if you want 
rcommended and suggested packages to be installed automatically.

I don't know about the other packaging tools, though.

After the fact deborphan and debfoster may be helpfull to clean up a 
little, but I must admit I haven't felt courageous enough to try it, so 
far ;-)


Just in case it might be usefull to someone,

Kind regards,


Ingo