Comment 22 for bug 1267059

APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval is kinda documented in /etc/cron.daily/apt

# APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "0";
# - Do "apt-get autoclean" every n-days (0=disable)

From what I read from the code, it does just that. According to the man page "autoclean clears out the local repository of retrieved package files".

In what way is that equivalent to "autoremove"?

Besides: The original authors intent "to auto-remove only those packages that have been made redundant by the current set of updates" fails. Please see comment #7:

The author checks for auto-removable packages, then marks the new packages as "to install" and then checks again for autoremovable packages and then tries to remove the difference of those two sets. But the two sets are always the same, the resulting set is therefore empty. Without actually installing the new packages, the solver does not return a different set of auto-removable packages.