gyum/yum question about removing stuff

[marknewlyn]

Hi

I am trying to remove things I never use from my system. I am using gyum as an interface to yum but this isn't the issue.

When I select a package to remove I often get dependencies to erase that don't make sense to me. Here is an example - I want to remove gphoto and it gives me a list of other packages to remove which I don't understand and worry me that I'll break something else:

I will do the following:
[erase: gphoto2 2.1.5-1.1.i386]
I will erase these to satisfy the dependencies:
[deps: kdegraphics-devel 7:3.3.1-2.4.i386]
[deps: gthumb 2.4.2-5.i386]
[deps: gnome-volume-manager 1.1.0-5.i386]
[deps: gnome-session 2.8.0-4.i386]
[deps: kdegraphics 7:3.3.1-2.4.i386]

I am pretty sure that I don't want to remove gnome-volume-manager or gnome-session but they come up anyway.

Could someone explain this behaviour to me?

Thanks

Mark

[bitrain]

The why: packages are linked together, this is called dependencies. If you remove 1 of them, it will remove all dependencies.
The (bad) answer: open a terminal, and do: rpm -e package_name
Why do you want to remove it, it is a part of gnome, so some programs might need it.

[notorious]

Have you tried 'Add/Remove Programs'?
Applications>System Settings>Add/Remove Programs

[marknewlyn]

But if package A requires package B to work (and therefore an installation dependency exists) why
should removing package A also remove package B - unless you know for sure that package B was only installed for package A?

This is what I don't understand - its seems like many packages of type B are being removed without knowing for sure that they only exist to satisfy installation dependencies of A?

Mark

[marcos]

marknewlyn, I have the exact same problem as you. I believe the story that yum is able to resolve dependencies is a farse. I've been using Fedora since FC2 and most of the time I try to uninstall something, yum tells me about dependencies which are not related to the package I want to remove. Sometimes I ask to remove a gnome package and yum shows a dependency which is part of KDE!!