Installing then removing evolution leaves unused packages behind

[Fire]

If i want to uninstall Evolution because i want to replace it, for example, with Thunderbird, i can't, because trying to un-install Evolution there are too much packages related to it and don't know if some of those packages should or shouldn't be removed.

apt 0.8.16~exp5ubuntu9, Ubuntu 11.10 beta 1
1. sudo apt-get install evolution
2. sudo apt-get remove evolution

What happens:
1. evolution, evolution-common, evolution-plugins, evolution-webcal, and libevolution are installed.
2. evolution and evolution-plugins are removed, but evolution-common, evolution-webcal, and libevolution are left installed.

What should happen:
2. evolution, evolution-common, evolution-plugins, evolution-webcal, and libevolution are all removed.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks a lot for reporting this, however a papercut should be a flaw in the default installation of Ubuntu that does not involve the addition or removal of any packages. For more information on what constitutes a paper cut, please see here http://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

I'm not sure how to go about solving this problem, but I can guess that it is either:

- Aptitude/USC not being aware of what packages should be removed with Evolution
- Evolution being badly packaged to that Aptitude/USC don't know where to find all the packages

Can anyone else shed some light on this?

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

bug 553733 might be a little related.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

It's related, though I'm pretty certain that it's not just evolution-common that's the subject of this particular report. When browsing USC for 'evolution', I notice a lot of installed packages that are a part of evolution. evolution-data-server, libebook, libdataserver are just a few. It seems that a lot of Evolution's back-end packages are being left behind after it is removed.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

It might actually be worth marking bug #553733 as a duplicate of this since evolution-common is only a part of the problem.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

libebook and libedataserver are shared libraries and are needed for other things too (try purging them) though evolution-data-server should be removed(there might be other reasons for that too). In either case a bug report in debian bug tracker would be more helpful I think.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

and also bug tasks for software-center and aptitude are invalid since the change, if doable will be done in evolution's debian/control

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

I'll send this upstream later tonight.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

The package manager will be able to deal with this correctly; that is, once other packages requiring evolution shared libs are also removed (then it should show up as no longer needed and removable with e.g. apt-get autoremove). Gnome-panel, for example, is one of the packages which require evolution-related packages (libecal and evolution-data-server (as a Recommends) at least in this case).

Evolution or e-d-s packages themselves don't seem to have an issue, so I'm marking this as Invalid.
However, I'm also re-opening the USC task because I feel this is instead related to prompting the user about packages which are no longer needed and removing them (analogous to Apt's autoremove).

In all cases, you should still be able to install thunderbird with no adverse effects.

[Fire (redsoul)]

It's true you can install both Evolution and Thunderbird but why have i to keep two mail clients?
Anyway removing the evolution packages, USC automatically removes some packages i didn't allow to remove like ubuntu-desktop; indicator-applet-session; gnome-applets; gnome-panel etc...
I don't get it, why should it remove ubuntu-desktop? ...

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport. The package manager (apt-get, aptitude, USC) is able to deal with the situation via the auto-installed information. This was pointed out by Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre already. But because of bug #424643 this auto-installed information is not properly written for the default install packages. The reason is that apt-get install tasks in the base install not meta-packages and in the task all libs are explicted listed (and not pulled in via dependencies).

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

About the other aspect of the bug that is releated to USC. What exaclty is the bug here? USC will use the auto-installed information to remove no longer needed packages if a package is removed. And it will also display a list of packages that are going to be removed.

[Fire (redsoul)]

Removing "evolution", USC proposes me to install "evolution-exchange" and "evolution-couchdb" and this is ok.
But there are other packages related to it that should be removed (automatically) with "evolution" "evolution-exchange" "evolution-couchdb"
"evolution-indicator" "evolution-common" "evolution-data-server-common" "evolution-data-server" "evolution-plugins" "libevolution" and others.
Trying to remove manually some of those, i don't know wich one, "ubuntu-desktop"; "indicator-applet-session"; "gnome-applets"; gnome-panel are removed too, without a clear rationale (or maybe i'm just stupid) .

[Jon "The Nice Guy" Spriggs (jontheniceguy)]

Fire, I ran a few checks to try and work out exactly which package it is that's triggering the massed removal of your Ubuntu Desktop if you try and remove certain evolution packages, but... the reason for it (that I found in the past) is that Evolution, which is the official Gnome Groupware Suite, it also provides (amongst other things) the calendar/clock/date application that we're all used to seeing on our gnome desktop, and thus the removal of that removes one of the dependencies of "ubuntu desktop". Because Gnome assumes you'll be using the gnome groupware suite, it's bundled into some of the "Dependency" fields of some of these applications...

For example, empathy requires libedataserver, and others of the same genre of libraries. Removing a package that others depend on will request the removal of those packages. You'll probably find a chain from one of those packages all the way up.

Ultimately though, consider the evolution packages as a Gnome library, ignore the name, for in truth, they probably contribute as much to Gnome as they do to evolution, and know that by removing the main evolution packages, you've removed the (sizable) chunk of packages that creates the application.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Evolution is not installed by default in 11.10, so I don't see how this can be blamed on bug #424643. But I also don't see how this can be blamed on Ubuntu Software Center. Even if I use apt-get, installing evolution also installs evolution-common, evolution-plugins, evolution-webcal, and libevolution, while removing it removes only evolution-plugins. That seems, straightforwardly, a bug in apt.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Torsten Spindler (tspindler)]

I do think apt does the right thing. On Precise I did:

$ sudo apt-get install evolution
$ sudo apt-get purge evolution
$ sudo apt-get autoremove

Note that purge/remove will only remove the package and packages that are directly dependent on it, e.g. evolution-plugins. Packages that have been installed as a requirement for the soon to be removed package (evolution) are marked auto and will get removed with 'autoremove' if no dependent package on it is found.

I mark the bug invalid.