Software Center does not warn a user when something important is marked for removal

[mac9416]

Binary package hint: software-center

Have you ever started to remove an app, glanced through the to-be-removed list, and... What is gnome-panel doing in there‽

It's happened to me multiple times. Fortunately, I always take time to double-check what's going to be removed and hit cancel if I see something strange. It also helps that I know what shouldn't be in that list.

But what if you're like a friend of mine, who I'll call Harley. Harley is not a power user. He spends most of his time browsing the web and using OpenOffice -- Have I discovered the fabled Average User‽
So when one morning he went to remove Evolution, he didn't notice what else was being removed being removed: indicator-me, gnome-session, gnome-applets, gnome-panel, ubuntuone-client-gnome. When he rebooted, he was greeted by a bland xterm session.
So he got the machine to me, and I reinstalled ubuntu-desktop. Harley computed happily ever after... I hope.

I realize that there are underlying problems causing this package management meltdown, and if anyone can help me get to the bottom of that, I'd greatly appreciate it.

But I think there's something simple we can do to protect the Average User from accidentally removing something important.
My suggestion: when a package on a list of key software (gnome-session, nautilus, etc.) is marked to be removed, the user should be warned that he may be about to remove something important. Obviously, this will be ineffective if the user sees this warning any time he removes _anything_, so the list should be quite minimal.

Note: Bug #561018 is similar, but it concerns packages with "essential" priority. I'm worried about important "optional" packages.

[Mohamed Amine Ilidrissi (ilidrissi.amine)]

I'm pretty sure there is a warning that informs you of additional packages being removed when removing an application on Maverick. Are you on Maverick or Lucid?

[mac9416 (mac9416)]

Harley's on Lucid. So am I, and I can confirm that a dialog pops up listing extra apps to be removed. But what I'm looking for is a strong warning when something is marked for removal that an Average User wouldn't remove (such as gnome-session). Harley obviously didn't realize that what he was removing was important. That's what I think needs to be fixed.

[Kiwinote (kiwinote)]

Hi! Thanks for your bug report. The bug you describe is being tracked in an already existing bug report, so I will mark this bug as a duplicate of the other one. Please continue to report any bugs you may find in software-center. Thanks again for your help!

[mac9416 (mac9416)]

Hi, Kiwinote, thanks for your attention to this bug! I see that the other bug was reported almost a month after this one. Isn't it customary to mark the newer bug as duplicate? It really doesn't matter which is marked duplicate, as long as the bug is fixed. I'm just curious.

[Kiwinote (kiwinote)]

Hi! Just for the info: As for which bug we mark as a duplicate of which bug, it isn't always the newest is always a duplicate of the oldest. Many factors can affect this, sometimes one has a clearer summary than the others, sometimes a particular person has commented on one of the bugs, sometimes a bug has many comments, or already has duplicates. In this particular case I was working through the bugs from newest to oldest, so when I saw this one I then recalled something similar that I had triaged slightly earlier on. All in all it's a bit random, and based on too many different factors to really determine a pattern in it. Thanks for your interest!

[mac9416 (mac9416)]

Makes sense. I guess that's a good reason to look at any given bug's duplicates to see different angles on the same problem. Thanks for the clarification!