[Aptitude-devel] Bug#661188: Bug#661188: aptitude purge <package> recursively REMOVES BUT DOES NOT PURGE the unneeded dependencies of <package>

[shirish शिरीष]

in-line :-

2012/2/28 Georgiy Treyvus <georgiytreyvus at gmail.com>:
> @Shirish:
> Maybe I'm just stupid, but I don't quite understand what you're trying to
> say here. I realize English is not your native language but can you explain
> your point more clearly?

 to put it very simply, I do not know of a way to figure out where the
.conf file after a package is removed. This is what I was trying to
show/figure out. Till as a user its not known where the .conf file is
(is it in .config/ or /etc or somewhere else altogether) its not easy
for the user (for e.g. me) to figure out whether that .conf file does
have value or I should simply get rid of it.

The dpkg -L was for showing that no info. is given for that (no info.
after removing libgs8) although from what has been said/shared there
are conf file present somewhere.

$ dpkg -L libgs8
Package `libgs8' does not contain any files (!)

The 'aptitude purge $packagename' example I used was to show that
specific line which said it is removing the conffile

D000001: removal_bulk purging? foundpostrm=1
Purging configuration files for libgs8 ...
D000001: removal_bulk purge done, removing list `/var/lib/dpkg/info/libgs8.list'

See the second line  ' Purging configuration files for libgs8' . My
issue is where these configuration files are, is not known to the user
and unless he knows at least where the configuration files are how is
s/he going to take a call. I do know that some packages have their
configuration files in /etc/ such as say dpkg

/etc/dpkg$ ls
dpkg.cfg  dpkg.cfg.d  dpkg.cfg.original  origins  shlibs.default
shlibs.override

This is possible to know by the listing of 'dpkg -L dpkg' as it does
show the location of the configuration file but libgs8 does not.
Similarly I have seen quite a few other packages which do not seem to
have this information.

At the very end I just have one question :-

a. Is there a way to know/figure out where the configuration files of
a given package are ?

Maybe its different for binary packages and/or libraries , if so does
somebody know how one can reliably find out ?

Unless the above info. is not there, its really hard (at least for me)
to even begin to ascertain whether doing a purge or not is good in any
case at all.

@ Georgiy Treyvus I do hope I was clear this time around. If not,
please lemme know and I would try again.

-- 
          Regards,
          Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
  My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3  8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17