#797067 apt: allow removing automatically-installed packages in "apt upgrade"

Package:
apt
Source:
apt
Description:
commandline package manager
Submitter:
Jakub Wilk
Date:
2017-12-28 17:15:10 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
#797067#3
Date:
2015-08-27 14:45:45 UTC
From:
To:
apt currently has two upgrade methods:

- "apt upgrade", which never removes any packages;
- "apt full-upgrade", which seems to be happy to remove anything to
resolve package conflicts.

But during transitions like GCCv5, where many shared libraries packages
get renamed, neither of them works well:

- "apt upgrade" is too conservative: it won't install renamed shlibs;
- "apt full-upgrade" is too liberal: it'll remove temporarily
uninstallable stuff that I need.

So I'd like to have something between "apt upgrade" and "apt
full-upgrade", which removes packages if that's required to resolve a
conflict, but only those that were marked as automatically installed.
#797067#8
Date:
2017-12-28 17:06:24 UTC
From:
To:
    % grep AutomaticRemove /etc/apt/apt.conf
    APT::Get::AutomaticRemove "true";
    % sudo apt upgrade
    [...]
    The following packages were automatically installed and are
    no longer required:
    [...]
    Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.

May apt upgrade go back to honoring APT::Get::AutomaticRemove "true"; ?
This used to work, but was broken, apparently deliberately, in #855891.
Having to ^C upgrade and rerun with --autoremove is... "suboptimal" :).