Comment 1 for bug 1267059

I had a quick glance at /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade, and it looks like that Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies only autoremoves dependancies that have become auto-removeable during *this* very run of unattended-upgrade! Anything that had already been auto-removeable before invokation of /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade will not get autoremoved by unattended-upgrade.

(See lists "pkgs_auto_removable" set in line 706, "now_auto_removable" set in line 817, and only their difference being autoremoved in line 819)

Is that correct?

If this is the intended functionality of Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies, then this is not a bug with unattended-upgrade, but with its documentation. /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades says

    // Do automatic removal of new unused dependencies after the upgrade
    // (equivalent to apt-get autoremove)
    Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies "true";

But it's actually only equivalent to apt-get autoremove if there was nothing to be autoremoved beforehand. That should be clarified.